“Journey to the Dark” by Yang Yongliang is an alternate-reality Shanghai. The city not only engulfs the natural landscape – it becomes the landscape itself. Shadowy mountains (a nod to shan shui, traditional Chinese abstract landscape painting) scattered with cranes, bridges, and scaffolding are constantly under construction and state of modification. In Yongliang’s museum installation, city lights blink on and off, but so do stars flickering in the night sky. The “artificial and the “nature” collapse into each other, merging into a new surrealist urban landscape that bleeds into an infinite galaxy expanding out of the frame.
“Journey to the Dark” by Yang Yongliang is an alternate-reality Shanghai. The city not only engulfs the natural landscape – it becomes the landscape itself. Shadowy mountains (a nod to shan shui, traditional Chinese abstract landscape painting) scattered with cranes, bridges, and scaffolding are constantly under construction and state of modification. In Yongliang’s museum installation, city lights blink on and off, but so do stars flickering in the night sky. The “artificial and the “nature” collapse into each other, merging into a new surrealist urban landscape that bleeds into an infinite galaxy expanding out of the frame.