Artists › Yang Shaobin › Biography - Exhibitions
Biography of Yang Shaobin
Yang Shaobin was born in 1963 in Tangshan, Heibei Province, China. In 1983 he graduated from the Polytechnical University, Hebei, and in 1991 he moved to the artist village at Yuanmingyuan, Beijing. Finally, in 1995 he settled at Tonxian, a suburb of Beijing.
Yang's work has been exhibited in a wide variety of solo and group exhibitions at numerous international galleries and museums. His works are also included in many prestigious private collections including those of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (USA), Modern Art Center (Milano, Italy), Graz Museum (Austria), Raum fur kunst und Musik Dusseldorf (Germany), and the Cartier foundation (France).
Violence, transformating, the bestial ravaging of the physical as well as mental self are the topics so explicitly explored by Yang Shao Bin. His canvases and sculptures portray distorted figures engaged in bloody tussles or in bizarre acts of self adulteration, all of which are set against garish red, black and eerie green back drops.
The faces of the figures are blurred, as are their movements, thus robbing them of any sense of individuality and allowing them to more purely express the absolute agony of corporeal destruction. One senses that these are not depictions of independent acts of violence, but are instead almost iconographic representations of the brutality so often evinced in human history.
Yet despite the obscuring of faces or the use of generic, prototypical features, the paintings retain a deep psychological resonance through their gaudy colours and their historic affiliation.
They recall not only the disturbing paintings of Francis Bacon and the expressively frightening Asiatic sculptures of Gods primed for battle, but also the explosive emotions and sentiments entangled within our history's chronic bursts of violence - the very revolutions, wars and bloody political coups and upheavals upon which Yang so graphically taps into his startling and unnerving works.
Exhibitions of Yang Shaobin
Solo Exhibitions:
2006
- OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING, St. Matthaeus Church, Berlin, Germany
- 800 Meters, Long March Independent Project Space, Beijing, China
2004
- Beijing Art Now Gallery, Beijing, China (solo)
2003
- ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING (former Prüss & Ochs) Berlin, Germany
2001
- Chinese Contemporary (Gallery), London
- Loft Gallery, Paris, France
2000
- Asian Fine Arts Gallery, Berlin
- Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin | Beijing (former Asian Fine Arts) Berlin, Germany
Group Exhibitions:
2009
- SILENCE, ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIIN|BEIJING, Berlin, Germany.
- First Steps - Last Words, MASP - Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
- CHINA - Ein anderer Blick, Kunstverein Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
2008
- Under the Sky - International Positions in Contemporary Painting
2007
- Dramas of Violence, Indonesian National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia (solo)
- Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, Arabic
- Emotion Aesthetics, dARTex, The Danish Art Exchange, Beijing, China
- Yang Shaobin: IMMACULATA CONCEPTIO, ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING, Berlin, Germany (solo)
- INFERNO IN PARADISE: 10 YEARS ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN I BEIJING, Berlin, Germany
- YANG SHAOBIN, National Gallery Jakarta, Indonesia (solo)Zurück zur Figur, Malerei der Gegenwart, Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland.
- The Real Thing: Contemporary Art From China, Tate Liverpool, UK
- Chinese Contemporary Sotsart, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2006
- Voca me cum Benedictis, St. Matthaeus Foundation, in cooperation with ALEXANDER
- CHINA NOW - Kunst in Zeiten des Umbruchs, Sammlung Essl | Essl Collection, Klosterneuburg, Austria
- Hermann Nitsch | Yang Shaobin, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, Beijing, China
- Hermann Nitsch | Yang Shaobin: Retour China, ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING, Berlin, Germany
- CHINA AVANTGARDE, Wiedergeburt des Mystischen, Museum Klosterneuburg/Sammlung Essl, Wien, Austria
- Mahjong - Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, Galerie der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany
- Kunstmuseum Bern (2004), Switzerland
- Palmbeach, ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN I BEIJING, Miami, USA
- Zurück zur Figur, Malerei der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle der Hypo - Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany.
2005
- Vibrations, ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING, Berlin, Germany (solo)
- Painting-unrealism, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, BEIJING, China
- ASIA: THE PLACE TO BE? ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN I BEIJING, Berlin, Germany
- Prague Biennale, Czech Republic
- Chinese Sculptures, Museum Beelden aan Zee, Netherlands
2004
- China: Bodies Everywhere, Musee d'Art Contemporain, Marseille, France
- Forbidden Senses, Sarlat, France
- Me! Self-portraits of the 20th Century, Museum of Luxembourg
- Bridge, Siemens Forum, Munich, Germany
- Chinesi!, Potenza Museum, Potenza, Italy
- The Group, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA
- Pain, Michel Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA
- China-Cuba, MACLA Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino San Jose, California, USA
- 24 Living Artists in China, ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN I BEIJING / WHITE SPACE BEJING, Beijing, Germany
2003
- CP Open Biennale, Indonesian National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia
- Der Rest der Welt, Pirmasens, Germany
- Die Neue, Kunsthalle 2, Mannheim, Germany
- Under Pressure, Geneva, Switzerland
2001
- De waan, Stichting Odapark, Venray, Netherlands
- First Guangdong Triennale: Reinterpretation, Ten years of Experimental Chinese Art, Guangdong Museum of Fine Artists, China with the Football World Cup, Millennium Monument Museum, Beijing, China
- Chinese Contemporary Art, Reykjavik, Iceland
- Long March, Upriver Loft, Kunming, China
2001
- Millennium Portrait of China, Bremen City Gallery, Bremen
2000
- Portraits de Chine Contemporaine, Espace Culturel Francois Mitterand, Perigueux, France
1999
- dAPERTutto - The 48th Venice Biennale, Venice
- Art China, Limn Gallery, San Francisco
- Passage, Dongyu Museum, Shenyang
- Upriver Gallery Collection, Upriver Gallery, Chengdu
- He Xiangning Gallery Collection, Shenzhen
1998
- 5000 + 10, Chinese Contemporary (London), Bilbao, Spain
- The Grand Tour, Chinese Contemporary, London
- Made in China, Nicolaus Sonne Fine Arts, Berlin
- Personal Touch, Teda Contemporary Art Museum, Tianjin
1997/98
- 8 + 8 - 1, Selected Paintings by Fifteen Contemporary Artists, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
1996/97
- CHINA!, Kunstmuseum, Bonn (travelling to Vienna, Copenhagen and Warsaw)>
1996
- Elevenses - The Avant Garde, Taikoo Palace, Hong Kong
1995
- The History of Chinese Oil Painting: From Realism to Post-modernism, Galerie Theoremes, Brussels
- 5 + 5:Voices from Russia and China, Schoeni Art Gallery, HK
- Visions of China: Contemporary Chinese Paintings by Chinese Masters, Bangkok
- The Magnificent Duo - Recent Works by Yue Minjun and Yang Shaobin, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
- The Beijing 3: A Three Man Show by Zhang Gong, Yue Minjun, Yang Shaobin, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
1994
- 8 + 8, Contemporary Russian and Chinese Avant Garde Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
- Faces Behind the Bamboo Curtain - Works by Yue Minjun and Yang Shaobin, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
- Art Asia ?, Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong
1993
- The First Chinese Professional Artists Exhibition, Akuna Gallery, Beijing
1992
- Contemporary Modern Art Exhibition, Friendship Hotel, Beijing
- China Modern Art Exhibition, Beijing University, Beijing
1988
- Hebei Oil Painting Exhibition, Hebei
