Digital Photographic Artwork of Yang Yongliang
Yang Yongliang, a young artist from China, combines traditional Chinese Shan Shui (literally, mountain water) art with digital techniques to create “ghost landscapes,” which offer a dreamy techno vision of man and his environment. While the videos and pictures have a striking sense of harmony, they are also somehow unsettling. Industrial images, pollution, and waste have replaced the traditional country idyll.
“The city is the place where I live, a space that evolves with me and which contains my memories. A mirage or ghost-city is the environment towards which I reach out, but it only exists in my imagination. The water of the mountain (the landscape) suggests the imitation of the traditional art forms of my childhood, which have gradually disappeared as the city and I have evolved.
The birth of the Ghost Landscape is not an accident. The city, the landscape – I love them and hate them at the same time. If I love the city for its familiarity, I hate it even more for the staggering speed at which it grows and engulfs the environment. If I like traditional Chinese art for its depth and inclusiveness, I hate its retrogressive attitude. The ancients expressed their sentiments and appreciation of nature through landscape painting. As for me, I use my own landscape to criticize reality as I perceive it.”- Yang Yongliang