Yang Shaobin

Biography:

Yang Shaobin (Chinese, b.1963) is a painter best known for his near-abstract portraits of deformed, ghostly creatures in red and pink hues.

Born in Tangshan, Hebel, he studied at the Hebei Polytechnical University before moving to Yuanmingyuan, a village on the outskirts of Beijing, where many Chinese avant-garde artists were living. Yang initially worked in a cynical Realist style, and his work of the early 1990s focuses on groups of men in uniform fighting one another. By 1998, he had developed looser brushstrokes and continued to convey narratives that comment on the social and political changes in China. The recurring use of red in his work symbolizes human vitality, capitalist greed, as well as the iconography of the Cultural Revolution. In a recent series of paintings and sculptures titled X-Blind Spot (2004), Yang examines the living conditions of coal mining communities in Hebei Province, Shanxi Province, and Mongolia. His work has been exhibited at the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai, the Long March Space in Beijing, and the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, among other institutions.

He currently lives and works in Beijing.