From his early age, Yang Yongliang has studied traditional Chinese art such as shui mo painting and calligraphy with the great master Yang Yang in Shanghai. Using a camera, the contemporary visual device to express his creativity, and inspired by the main representation of Chinese Shanshui paintings, such as mountaineous landscapes represented by the most influent classical artists for centuries, he cleverly creates a new world of illusions, a vision between dreams and nightmares, futuristic and age-old at one time.

As he puts it himself, he makes art to criticise reality as he sees it, whereas the old masters would express through their art deep feelings triggered by a natural world, which to them seemed permanent, Yang Yongliang is more concerned by the turmoil he witnesses everyday : « I love the familiarity of the city, more so to hate it growing too fast and invading everything around at an unexpected speed ».

Yang Yongliang's work goes beyond the notion of pastiche through its refinement and texture, this body of work becomes a "photographic Shan Shui". Formatted to long panoramic scrolls, printed on cotton paper and red-stamped like in the ancient times, enhanced with details and sense of scale, the whole composition being black and white as it would be chinese ink, Yang Yongliang’s pictures do indeed represent the contemporary Shan Shui.

As for his illustrious ancestors, his priority is composition – a chaotic landscape not of ancient trees, waterfalls, pavilions or some Holy mountains, but electric pylons, skyscrapers and traffic-jam.

When watching the photographic works at a distance, they are dreamlike Shanshui calligraphy paintings. On the contrary when looking at them closely, they become shockingly modern city views. He perfectly handles the contradictions between ephemeral and solid, sparse and bold, beauty and ugly so as to make the entire picture poetically harmonious, but the details are 'blots on the landscape'.

He successfully achieves a perfect balance between fragility and danger and contrarily to his peers, brings the viewers not only visual enjoyment, but also to the contemplation and self-examination of various social, environnemental and economical concerns. This work can also be seen as a cry of alarm triggered by the devastating effects of uncontrolled urbanisation and industrialisation.

Seducing and alluring, yet dynamic, his megalopolises, mushroom cloud alike are not innocent when Shanghai, his native city, has seen its population growing five times in the past four decades…

Oscillating between sublimated reality and fictional composition, the splendid and visionary pictures of Yang Yongliang move us and submerge us to the fictive depth of those vertical and sprawling cities made of cranes and interchanges, those cities constantly expanding with an infernal rythmn that he ironically named « Heavenly cities » … Is that our future ?