“When I work, I am often moved by indissoluble clues and details, surrounded by fantasies, feeling both excited and happy. Only art can show the simple relationship behind the complexity of objects.” ——— Yang Maoyuan
Yang Maoyuan’s works mostly focus on the idea of history, destiny, the order of things and on the form of objects from different civilizations. Yang Maoyuan is comparatively more bent on human “intuition” and “feeling” than on conceptual thinking, a notable difference in an age where concepts often take pride of place. Since 1994, Yang Maoyuan’s experience shooting documentaries twice in the Taklimakan Desert and in Lop Nur has had a huge impact on his artistic creation. He has since often left his studio to truly understand nature, and make one with the desert to look for traces of the coexistence of time and history. This has become an important constitutive part of his works: looking at Yang Maoyuan’s creation, we can clearly see a semi-biographical form of works with a strong personal aspect.
The exhibition is named after an eponymous work featured in it. Yang Maoyuan connects two “objects” with the same shape, making it impossible to distinguish their original shapes and intentions. In fact, the artist is trying to eliminate the “object” itself that contains specific memories of history, culture, ethnic group and time. Another piece titled “The Perfect Junction of Two Heads of David” separates the hairstyle of “David” from its complete context, isolates it, and combines it with its duplicate; the unpredictable relationship generated by the two individual and identical objects produces a new kind of poetic quality. Other works in the exhibition include “Implement”, “Sky Painting”, “Smiling Faces” and other series.
Yang Maoyuan was born in Dalian, China in 1966. He graduated from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989 and participated in the China Modern Art Exhibition in the same year. In 2002, he won the CCAA China’s Contemporary Art Award. In 2011, he represented China at the 54th Venice Biennale. He currently lives and works in Beijing. Yang Maoyuan is a multidisciplinary artist. His works involve painting, sculpture, installation, photography and other media. He has been exhibited in important institutions within China and abroad, including 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. His works are also in the collection of important private collectors, museums and institutions around the world.
