Yang Yongsheng

Dramatic effects of light, whether in black and white landscapes, or in the strongly colored figurative red mattress series, are the hallmark of Yang Yongsheng’s paintings. Yang Yongsheng’s light is painted light, not to be mistaken for the natural light of the real world. This painted light is created with his vigorous handling of paint in a luminous high key palette and his strong color schemes that are saturated in light and dark. Light is created out of paint with great fluency and vigor.

The light that “flows like a stream of water” across Yang Yongsheng’s paintings is not the result of the fall of natural light. It is light that is reminiscent of J.M.W. Turner: a light that creates a dramatic mood in the black and white paintings or a light that creates the emotional atmosphere in his figurative work. This light washes across the canvas, sometimes from different directions, but always coherent, thanks to unifying effects of Yang Yongsheng’s brushwork

A fluent handling of paint is the second defining element these paintings. Yang Yongsheng brushwork complicates our perceptions about the subject matter in the painting by drawing attention away from the roads and girls and to the surface effect of the paint itself.

The road scenes, open and spare, or the figures, cool and detached, are not the real subject matter in Yang Yongsheng’s painting. The content of Yang Yongsheng’s paintings is this inspired young artist re-inventing the language of painting in his own authentic voice.