Josep Soler i Casanellas
Yang Mian
Yang Mian (杨 冕 Born in 1970 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province). In 1997 graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Art, Oil Painting Depantment Currently lives and works in Beijing and Chengdu. As I look through a book containing Yang Mian’s collection from Beauty Standard, going back to 1997, I’m first bored by the large number and repetitiveness of the images (finished in 2005). I see only faces- effortless, gliding, and monotonous. Women tossing their hair with accidental charm, giggling, subtly entranced by how uncomplicated their life is…
Done in the style of this Tang dynasty “gold, blue, green” (or “green, blue, white”) method of painting, with mineral pigments, the later replica is a work known all over China- still as ubiquitous as Michael Jackson is today. In a poignant modern take on the listing of colors in a method’s name, Yang has invented a method all his own, naming it after C, M, Y, and K- the color abbreviations, transposing and totally transforming images that people recognize.
Starting with a blown-up copy of the original, every pixel in the image is ascribed a color- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black to be precise, though the tints are customized. The artist has taken liberties with the pixels’ placement, but he takes great pains in locating and processing them. Every step of the transformation, which ultimately takes months to complete, is done personally. He has performed this transformation on images of many famous works, from Tang Dynasty paintings to European classical works.
C.V.
