Dimension, Imitation, Transformation: Huang Yishan Solo Exhibition | 4.27 – 5.20.2017

Tang Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of “Dimension Imitation Transformation: Huang Yishan Solo Exhibition” on April 27, 2017. Curated by Dai Zhuoqun, this exhibition presents eight new works from Huang Yishan’s recent series. The curator has titled the exhibition “Dimension Imitation Transformation,” cleverly using a homophone for the historic Vimalakirti Sutra paintings, while concisely summarizing and refining several core concepts within the artist’s work, related to the “dimension” of space, the “imitation” of images, and the “transformation” of structure.

In Huang Yishan’s new series, he breaks with conventional explorations of painting’s strange structures, broadly utilizing the construction of reliefs to give the artworks multiple dimensions and interstitial qualities. Huang also dissects and represents the images and surfaces from landmark artworks within art history. Their existential relationships with the artist derive distortions and new meanings from fine internal deliberation.

The structure of space, the logic of narrative, and the consideration of materials are issues that Huang has always explored in his work. These new pieces comprehensively utilize diverse collages, painted images, relief effects, and the principles of parallel perspective. Through rigorous and minute production methods, he creates visually illusory spaces and scenes on a two-dimensional plane. He formulates “scenes-within-scenes” and “paintings-within-paintings,” which seem like traditional multi-panel screen paintings. The irregular forms of the works, together with the reliefs, strengthen the vivid materiality of the scene.

The artist creates a labyrinth for the viewer, such that the act of viewing itself becomes confusing and dissociative; the unknown is situated both inside and outside the painting. The tension between the work and viewing is manifested when facing these changing emotions. His paintings-within-paintings directly appropriate famous artworks from history and ready-made pictures, as well as jokes and banter, which are the three portals into his work. These layered, interlocking misunderstood “sites” guide the viewer down an unfamiliar side path; the artist himself builds a parallel world of self-awareness and conceptual projection within the convoluted chain of art history and multiple visual dimensions.

About the Artist

Huang Yishan was born in 1983 in Guangdong, China. Evoking surrealist tropes in his paintings, his imagined worlds are often clinical in their spatial abstractions, the narratives taking place in what seems like hospital rooms or unfurnished houses. Upon further inspection, the viewer might find a strange detail – a human head or a half-hidden pool of blood – that interrupts these sanitary atmospheres.

Huang Yishan selected solo exhibitions include: “Blue Sky”, Fei Gallery, Guangzhou; “Not an investigation and research of physical things Ant metaphysical space narrative” Tong Space, Beijing. Huang’s works have been featured in group exhibitions including “2016 National Art Exhibition of Drawing,” National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; “Advancing Structure –Art Exhibition of Young Teachers from Oil Painting Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine  Arts,” Guangzhou Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; “Inside – Outside,” Klein Sun Gallery, New York, NY; “Guangdong Youth,” Sabaki Space, Guangzhou, China; “Seven Ways: Image-Making and it’s Discontents,” O2 ART, Beijing, China; Times Art Museum, Beijing, China; “Image Mash-up: 2010 Invitation Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Oil Painting,” Shenzhen Art Museum,  Guangdong, China; Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, China; “Another World Boundary,” Tang Contemporary, Bangkok. Huang Yishan currently works as a lecturer in the Oil Painting Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.