Liang Yue's photographic work negotiates the complex symbolic terrain between the exterior and interior, memory and reality and the public and the private. Her open-ended series of photos Several Dusks (2003) and Lily's Afternoon (2003) focus on moments drawn from ordinary life. Yet, a sense of foreboding pervades all of them. Liang Yue observes and elaborates on a uniquely ambiguous, uneasy assortment of public spaces in Shanghai, but with a detached viewpoint. The images are shot just before nightfall and are linked to an elusive time and the question of presence. The snapshot aesthetic makes it difficult to think of it as specific to a single place. The recurring images are a partial and instant view of the city. Her scenes of distant frenzy co-mingle possibility and problem, and leave the viewer uncertain about their specific mood and theme. The contrast between familiarity and strangeness is highlighted, and it is precisely this feeling of contradiction that makes her photos so fascinating and attractive.
Read MoreLiang Yue's recent work also straddles the line between the inclusive and introvert. Photos from In Summer (2005) and On the Bridge (2006) are shot in the context of the poetic impossible rather than the metropolitan. Here, the images are devoid of human beings. What we see are empty streets and unoccupied interiors without any visual over-saturation. Liang Yue opens a vast realm of associations, therefore collapsing the notion of one specific and determinate meaning. The Untitled Red (2005) series is comprised of monochromatic red-tone photographs that, at a glance, walk a fine line between concreteness and abstraction. Yet, the difficulty in reading these images owes less to any inherent formal opacity than a kind of counterintuitive distancing effect.
Liang Yue was born in Shanghai in 1979. She graduated from the Shanghai Art Academy in 2001. Today she lives and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Numerous, Liang Yue's Solo Exhibition, Shanghai (2011); Move on Asia, the End of Video Art, Casa Asia-Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (2011); Shanghai Candid: Women In Motion, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, U.S.A. (2010); China Power Station - Part IV, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2010); Shanghai Kino, Shanghai Kino, KUNSTHALLE BERN, Switzerland (2009); China Power Station: Part II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007); China Power Station: Part I., Battersea Power Station, London, U.K. (2006); The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, U.S.A. (2006); China Contemporary – Architecture, Art and Visual Culture, Netherlands Photo Museum, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2006); Restless – Photography and New Media, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2006); Stop Dazing, BizArt, Shanghai (2005); Conceptual Photography from the Peoples Republic of China, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, U.S.A. and China Now, MoMA Film at the Gramercy Theatre, New York, U.S.A.(2004).
