Yang Maoyuan, one of the five artists elected to attend the Venice Biennale Arte 2011. He was born in Dalian in 1966, graduated from the Printing Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1989, one of the artists of the "89 China Avant-Garde Art Exhibition". Since 1994, Yang Maoyuan has explored ancient Loulan in depth twice and helped to film a documentary about the relics of the ancient Loulan Kingdom. The desert carved by wind, sand and other forces of Nature, mysterious relics of the ancient kingdom, peculiar hybrid civilizatios have fired his imagination and became an idea for many of his later works created from 1996, he has been focusing on landscapes and portraits in his oil paintings. The "horses" and "sheep" in an aerated-shape were created around 2000 and related to nomadic culture. The two animals were made into bloated balls whose original forms were altered by the artist. His use of "roundness" and resolution method was later applied to his "Look Inside" series created from 2005. In this series, classical western sculptures were simplified and rounded through which he reinterpreted the human heads whose details are highly valued in western culture as they include the inward oriental culture. This series has been exhibited in the Palazzo Medici, Florence and evoked wild enthusiasm.
Interview Date: July 15th, 2011
Interview Location: Yang Maoyuan's Studio in Songzhuang, Beijing
Reporter: Zhu Li
Photography: Wang Haoning
Editor: Yang Yanyuan
