YANG MIAN

Living in a world where images are spread through our lives, they influence our shopping decision, inspire us with ideas and orientate us in the world. In other words, images are everywhere, including the digital ones.

Yang Mian has been studying the notion of media in his career. Does the distribution of images leave the same impact on every audience? How does image influence the public ? How does it spread ? After exploring the influence of advertising images of Chinese idealised women from 1990s to 2005 to the Chinese public, Yang Mian has been studying the intriguing topics of the impact of the artistic media and the education of Chinese audiences.

In the exhibition, Yang Mian has selected various historical Chinese art works collected by the Guimet Museum and the Cernuschi Museum respectively.

Despite the enhacenment of access to culture through museums in China, Chinese audiences have been mainly educated by art books. It’s even more difficult for Chinese audiences to see the art works in person if they are in foreign countries. Consequently, Yang Mian points to the differences between the real vision and the printed version of the paintings in C.M.Y.K. By definition, C.M.Y.K (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) denotes the four primary colours, or more precisely the three primary colours plus black, which were used when printing in 4 colours.

Through reappropriation of the original image, Yang Mian brings us back to the geneses of pictorial art and printing: C.M.Y.K. These primary colours are all in perfect round shapes and voluntarily placed by the artist one next to the other. The clarity of the circle and the harmony of colours symbolise the quest of perfection.

In a multicultural universe nourished by Western Art with the techniques of mosaic, Impressionist, Pointillist, abstract painting and by Chinese Art with the techniques of paintings Shanshui (landscape painting), the literati, the sculpture Taihu, Yang Mian’s computer technology takes us into the heart of a game swinging between the invisible and the visible, reality and illusion, abstract and symbol.

The compositions are revealed in an essential reading: that of the essence of painting (the primary colours) and of the view (four-colour optical game).

By questioning our understanding of the world which is invariably influenced by the massive dissemination of images, Yang Mian invites us to revitalise both the past and the future of culture, in order to become aware of the impact of the media environment around us.