Yang Fudong: Renowned Shanghai-based filmmaker and video artist

Yang Fudong creates films that straddle the worlds of contemporary art installation and cinema. ⁣⁣

Yang Fudong, Still from Liu Lan, 2003, single-channel film, 35mm black & white film transferred to DVD with sound by Zhou Qing; 14 min. © Yang Fudong, courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai.⁣

The single-channel film ???????????? ???????????? (2003) is one of Yang’s early works, drawing upon traditional literature, philosophy, and art. Visually, his film is cast in a dreamlike environment in which two lovers from seemingly different times have an intimate encounter yet are destined to remain apart. ⁣⁣

Yang is a renowned Shanghai-based filmmaker and video artist. He graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1995, where he studied oil painting. He briefly returned to his hometown of Beijing, where he took photography classes at the Central Academy of Fine Arts before financial pressure led him to move to Shanghai.

Working in Shanghai, Yang began making his own digital films in his spare time. By the late 1990s, Yang established himself as a full-time artist and started widely exhibiting his video art. He has since gone on to produce over twenty single-channel films and over twenty multi-channel film installations, including his epic work Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, which was included in the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Yang was named Artnet artist of the year in 2016, and he has had numerous international solo exhibitions, including his most recent exhibition at the Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai in 2018 and the Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo, Japan in 2017.

Yang Fudong, Still from Liu Lan, 2003, single-channel film, 35mm black & white film transferred to DVD with sound by Zhou Qing; 14 min. © Yang Fudong, courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai.⁣

See how thousands of years of pictorial traditions continue to influence the arts today. Step into Out of the Shadows: Contemporary Chinese Photography through January 2021 at MOPA. The show also includes work by artists Yang Yongliang, Hong Lei, Lang Jingshan and others. Can’t make it? Fly through MOPA’s virtual museum tour.

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Check out more photography resources, including an online conversation with Out of the Shadows guest curator Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres.

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