Yang Maoyuan is a Chinese contemporary artist producing sculptures, installations, drawings and paintings. He is principally interested in the combination and transformation of different aesthetic genres, often mixing western and eastern objects or forms and approaching one with the other's perspective. Fond to quote freely from art history, Yang frequently stirs his audience to come to grips with their own certainties by fundamentally altering the both the context of famous icons and the manner in which they are perceived. This often results in idiosyncratic pieces that are both humorous and meditative. Eschewing the application of any overarching "concept", Yang Maoyuan's artistic practice consists in practical experiments that are conducive to more profound questions.
Besides, Yang Maoyuan maintains a keen interest in history and in the visual heritage of traditional communities. Having directed documentaries himself, he likes to conduct his research himself and to experience different environments first hand. Once again, he abstains from any judgement on this heritage, but instead absorbs it as the starting point of further artistic experiment, adapting and bending its generic constraints to his own style and technique.
Born in Dalian in 1966, Yang Maoyuan graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and currently lives and works in Beijing. He has been exhibited in important institutions within China and abroad, representing China at the 54th Venice Biennale and participating in exhibitions at the National Gallery in Warsaw, Poland, Pompidou Centre in Paris, Dresden Art Center, Hunan Provincial Museum, Today Art Museum, Martin Gropius Museum, Ordos Art Museum, VILLA BREDA Museum in Padua, Medici Ricardi Palace, etc