Galerie Paris-Beijing

The Peach Colony is a famous prose poem from the Song Dynasty author Tao Yuanming. It tells the story of a fisherman who, walking along a river, suddenly found himself in the middle of a blooming peach tree grove. Wishing to explore this forest, he went all the way to the riverbed where he discovered a passage towards an magical land. The inhabitants were the descendants of those who had fled the tyranny of the Qin`s emperor. In the end, the fisherman returned home and nobody ever found the path to this land again.

In his new series, Yang Yongliang uses this allegory and offers a dark representation of this idyllic region. He lets undifferentiated, white-garbed characters, wander in a traditional setting of flowerless peach-trees where gigantic decaying industrial and urban elements arise.

A master in the subtle combination of Shanshui art and digital techniques, Yang Yongliang presents us with a delicate and refined series, expressing in a paradoxical way the brutality of industrialization and the over-urbanization, leading to the loss ruin of man and Nature alike. Decaying urban elements punctuate these poetic landscapes, establishing in a new harmonious whole the illusion of a peaceful traditional landscape.

Yang Yongliangfs probing works invite us to reflect on the irony of the destiny of these characters, condemned to live in the illusion of an ideal world. But arenft we, ourselves, the cause of such fatality? @