Pearl Lam Galleries in Singapore will host the paintings and collages of Yang Yongliang alongside a new feature-length film that gives the exhibition its title, “Yang Yongliang: Fall into Oblivion.”This 58-minute film, inspired by “The Peach Blossom Spring” (421), a tale written by Liu Song dynasty writer Tao Yuanming of a fisherman who stumbles upon a hidden utopia, sees a kendo armor-wearing man following a raven through what the gallery calls a “timeless dreamscape,” removed from the modern metropolis, a place where dreams and reality merge to point where existence itself seems meaningless.The film, shot in a grayscale that is Yang’s usual color palate, is matched with a number of gray works that together create an immersive experience intending to mirror in the gallery space the film’s protagonist’s uncovering of a new world that is a natural idyll in a concrete world.Among these are two new mixed media paintings acrylic paints are combined with cement to create gray, mountainous structures on the surface of the canvas. These paintings, which make mountains out of the very material that has created the modern world, maintain the binary between natural and man-made that is at the core of much of “Fall into Oblivion” the film and exhibition.These new works are featured alongside past digital collages. In these, Yang takes the natural wonders of mountains, forests and lakes that Yang had to constantly paint as part of his training in traditional “shan shui” painting and digitally manipulates them to add cranes and skyscrapers, creating what the gallery terms “fable[s] of the development of modern civilization,” full of “of psychological turmoil and uneasiness that is characteristic of the modern era.”Along with the film, paintings and photo-collages, Pearl Lam will also be displaying materials and props from the making of “Fall into Oblivion,” allowing gallery goers how this artist fascinated with the modern world deals with the modern art of film-making.“Fall into Oblivion” runs from April 2 through May 2, 2016 at Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore
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