Yang Fudong

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. Part 4 is about the idea of living on an island with no one else, avoiding the hustle and bustle of the busy metropolis. In Chinese legend, there is an island of Peach Blossoms - the very ideal place to live, where one's thoughts can fly freely.

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. Part 5 is about the return to the city and to reality. We live in the city and belong to it. If any problem arises, we are able to solve it.

Liu Lan tells a story about the break with tradition in China. An intellectual in a white suit meets a traditionally dressed woman in the countryside. Despite their mutual love, their lives seem incompatible. A woman’s voice sings a folksong, Why are people in love always separated from one another?’ The film’s atmosphere is melancholy and the landscape veiled in mist. Here Yang Fudong shows his connections with Chinese landscape painting.

Dawn Breaking is the opening chapter of Yang Fudong’s Museum Film Project. "The film in its final version is something different from the dailies showing the process of making it."

Two young men wear the uniform of 70’s policeman, sometimes they look like runaway criminal. They want to escape reality which is impossible to cast off. They yearn for the bright sunshine life, expecting the time to be captured, to exchange for a calmness of the heart.

The 13th Shanghai Biennale cooperated with the artist Yang Fudong in a public welfare short film - "Art, Art, Art...".

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. Part 4 is about the idea of living on an island with no one else, avoiding the hustle and bustle of the busy metropolis. In Chinese legend, there is an island of Peach Blossoms - the very ideal place to live, where one's thoughts can fly freely.

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. Part 4 is about the idea of living on an island with no one else, avoiding the hustle and bustle of the busy metropolis. In Chinese legend, there is an island of Peach Blossoms - the very ideal place to live, where one's thoughts can fly freely.

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. Part 5 is about the return to the city and to reality. We live in the city and belong to it. If any problem arises, we are able to solve it.

Liu Lan tells a story about the break with tradition in China. An intellectual in a white suit meets a traditionally dressed woman in the countryside. Despite their mutual love, their lives seem incompatible. A woman’s voice sings a folksong, Why are people in love always separated from one another?’ The film’s atmosphere is melancholy and the landscape veiled in mist. Here Yang Fudong shows his connections with Chinese landscape painting.

Dawn Breaking is the opening chapter of Yang Fudong’s Museum Film Project. "The film in its final version is something different from the dailies showing the process of making it."

Two young men wear the uniform of 70’s policeman, sometimes they look like runaway criminal. They want to escape reality which is impossible to cast off. They yearn for the bright sunshine life, expecting the time to be captured, to exchange for a calmness of the heart.

The 13th Shanghai Biennale cooperated with the artist Yang Fudong in a public welfare short film - "Art, Art, Art...".

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest has five parts. The series was finished in 2007 and shown as whole in the Venice Biennale the same year. Yang Fudong uses myths, individual memories and experiences as means to study identity and how it may be formed. In his films the spectator can sense the contradictions in the present and past China. Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part 1, was filmed on the Yellow Mountain. The mountain has a significant status in the traditional Chinese painting. The scenery, the not so clear motives of each character in the film combined with the music creates an almost poetic atmosphere.

Multi-channel video, 35mm, B&W, 8-11 mins...She rises gently, her hair tousled by the wind; gracefully, she picks up a handkerchief and wipes her brow; sunlight catches the wall across from her and lingers there for a while.

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. In Part 3 these 7 young people try to change their identity and have a different life. They choose to live in China's Southwestern villages, where they can get closer to nature, and to their own hearts.

Yejiang / The Nightman Cometh features a cast of strange figures who slip between historical eras. Strewn with symbols of past and future, civilisation and wilderness, dream and reality, the work is laden with filmic, artistic and literary meanings but surrenders to none. An ancient warrior is seen wounded and forlorn after battle, in conflict about his path in life. Yang dramatises the clash between the hero's social role or 'mask', and the more authentic face of his instincts and aspirations. For Yang, the visible world presented in this work is not an objective one but rather the externalisation of internal sentiments.

Multi-channel video installation (4 overhead projectors, 19 TV sets). Yang Fudong captures the poetic sentiment that arises in moments of individual encounter with the real world, and his own expression of the world inside him. His artistic practice engages in a temperamental dialogue with the traditional culture and literature of China. Yang Fudong constructs a potential platform for dialogue and negotiation between the self and external reality. In so doing, he does not propagate ？xed believes or dogmas. His work is based on process, on what he learns from ceaseless study, observation, and involvement with his social environment and the way it relates to the individual.

The film 'Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest' is based on the history of seven talented intellectuals from the ancient Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties. Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Yan, Xiang Xiu and Wang Rong were famous poets and artists at that time. Open and unruly, they used to gather and drink in the bamboo forest, singing songs and playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, in the hope of escaping from earthly life. They pursued individuality, freedom, and liberty. Their remarkable talent and passion made them a notable group in Chinese history. Part 2 exposes closed city life in a noisy metropolis, such as Shanghai. The 7 young people live in the city, but seem to have little connection with the city.

An Sai, Shanbei, An isolated village on the Loess Plateau, Northern China. Two young outsiders are moving in, While two young locals are struggling to escape. Comes into view a donkey full of luggage, Comes also into view a young couple, He carries her on a bike...

“For my work for films4peace, I considered certain visual metaphors. Compared with the eternity of the universe, human life is short, very short. Our existence is like a grain of sand in a desert or a speck of stone on the rock that makes the world. Conflict and destruction seems absurd if you consider the insignificance of our time on earth. Let us distance ourselves from oppression and slaughter. The creation of world peace is more important for all humankind. In my film, huge boulders slowly rise up amidst a chaotic noise that drifts in and out. Human life is not always beautiful, more often than not, we are simply trying to survive, allowing our lives to continue and nothing more.” —Yang Fudong

A 15 part film featuring scenes from Xianghe, running from the mundane to the surreal: people parade in opera costumes, slaughter pigs in public and dine on the fields; they bury the dead and get married, tickling the bride and groom, everything done without speech. Sitting somewhere between intimate personal reels and detached ethnographic records, the work creates a simultaneous sense of immersion and distance – of the type you might associate with end-of-life flashbacks. Yang gives nostalgia a fantastic, mystical bent, as if to suggest that to revel in memory is a creative act.

A 15 part film featuring scenes from Xianghe, running from the mundane to the surreal: people parade in opera costumes, slaughter pigs in public and dine on the fields; they bury the dead and get married, tickling the bride and groom, everything done without speech. Sitting somewhere between intimate personal reels and detached ethnographic records, the work creates a simultaneous sense of immersion and distance – of the type you might associate with end-of-life flashbacks. Yang gives nostalgia a fantastic, mystical bent, as if to suggest that to revel in memory is a creative act.

Yang Fudong, one of the most influential contemporary artists in China, is known for his epic black-and-white films and photographs, which straddle the worlds of contemporary art installation and cinema. Moving Mountains is a 46-minute, black-and-white film, accompanied by photographs from the film set, drawings and props. The film is inspired by the ancient tale of a man, seeking to move a mountain, and extolls the virtues of perseverance and collective action. The artist makes this story a poetic reflection upon human nature and the shifting values to which it can be subjected.

Yang Fudong, one of the most influential contemporary artists in China, is known for his epic black-and-white films and photographs, which straddle the worlds of contemporary art installation and cinema. Moving Mountains is a 46-minute, black-and-white film, accompanied by photographs from the film set, drawings and props. The film is inspired by the ancient tale of a man, seeking to move a mountain, and extolls the virtues of perseverance and collective action. The artist makes this story a poetic reflection upon human nature and the shifting values to which it can be subjected.

10 channel video installation. Music:Wang Wenwei. This work tells the end of the story of a soldier going into exile. On a sunny winter's day, the icy ground is stared with snow and life seems as peaceful as the weather. A soldier, escaping from a battlefield, comes to this deserted place which is plagued with the smell of death. He is wandering, attempting to leave this uninhabited world. The only option left to him, however, is walking, ceaselessly and endlessly. What is waiting for him? A hibernating snake is startled awake from its nice dreams and then sees a human, eyes blindfolded and hands bound on the back, kneeling on the freezing ice-covered lake. Who is sentenced to death by the sound of gunshots reverberating around the mountains?

Multi-channel video. Specifically created for the exhibition EDIT-Image Fetish and Phobia in September 2012. Different from his previous works, this two-channel video is projected onto the Chinese traditional Xuan paper - Jia Xuan. The black and white image and the natural texture of Jia Xuan paper create a unique visceral sensation. It triggers and foregrounds a special nostalgic sentiment from the video’s characters and environment.

Shot in the rural Chinese province of Hebei, this work captures a pack of wild dogs scavenging in an arid desolate landscape. East of Que Village considers the impact of Chinese industrialisation and urbanisation on rural communities, casting fresh light on those neglected by the new social-economic paradigm. The dogs, which literally have to eat each other to survive are juxtaposed with a group of villagers who struggle in the same ways. The work reflects the sense of isolation and loss increasingly present in Chinese society as communities are scattered, traditional rural villages are dissolved, and the fight for survival takes hold. The work's title signals to the only road leading from the village to the outside world.

A two-channel video projection film.

16 screens, 10-20 minutes. It is so real. A remote and intimate world.

Set in the city of Hangzhou, the film takes as its focal point a restless young man, Zhu Zi, following him as he aimlessly wanders through the city. Through a series of distinct vignettes, Yang depicts Zhu Zi's inability to find comfort in friends, lovers or environment as a reflection of the existential difficulty of China's "nameless generation," cast adrift during the rapid changes at the turn of the millennium.

Set in the city of Hangzhou, the film takes as its focal point a restless young man, Zhu Zi, following him as he aimlessly wanders through the city. Through a series of distinct vignettes, Yang depicts Zhu Zi's inability to find comfort in friends, lovers or environment as a reflection of the existential difficulty of China's "nameless generation," cast adrift during the rapid changes at the turn of the millennium.

County Magistrate, County Magistrate depicts a collective migration unfolding in an indeterminate time and place. Men, women, and children from a village move through mountains as the sky gradually grows dark, walking resolutely into the distance until they arrive at a new settlement. The abandoned courtyards they leave behind still bear traces of daily life: a steaming kettle, unfinished bowls of food, an old television flickering with static, and worn-out pieces of furniture. The camera then slowly pans to an outdoor movie screen showing After Armistice, a black-and-white film released in 1962. In the film, a man draws a business card from his pocket and introduces himself as Xianghe’s newly appointed county magistrate. At this moment, the story slips into another layer of fictional time and space.

In “S10” (2003), two female office workers wearing uniforms covered in zippers, zip together their arms and various other parts of their bodies. At this point we have entered the realm of a modern-day Shan Hai Jing inhabited by "exaggerated" creatures, a realm that is at the same time a metaphorical expression of a new concept of "subject" that is in the process of evolving organically from the individual to the other, and to the group. If we are all interconnected, just how far does the territory of the "individual" extend?

At the Summer Palace follows a mysterious man and a young boy as they wander through the Summer Palace, clad in clothing recalling styles from the 1980s and 1990s. The work unfolds like a hazy moment between dreaming and wakefulness, recalling the stillness of a languid afternoon. The era-specific details present in the setting seem to anachronistically clash with their pair’s clothing and behavior. Through this dislocation of time and space, Yang Fudong evokes the complex emotions of childhood, specifically the mixture of curiosity and unease a child feels upon encountering the strange and unknown.

Short film by Yang Fudong.

This video appears to be a humorous stylistic reference to spy films. All the clichés – tension, eroticism, grave, cigarette-smoking men and atmospheric music – are present. The woman wears fishnet hose and a fur coat with her military uniform. This ambiguity of seduction and deceit is not only the earmark of espionage, but possibly also a metaphor for the present ambivalent situation in China.

10-channel video installation. Sound by Jin Wang. A concert is being staged at the seaside. Accompanied by various musical instruments, the love story of a young couple is unfolded on the same location. The videos set on the centre display two scenarios taking place simultaneously: one shows a young couple riding a horse along the sea and the other a pair of lovers struggling for survival from a ship accident. The other eight screens deliver at the same time the performance of diverse instruments, a trumpet and a cello played on the rocks, for example. The background music, which is hallucinatory, dreamlike and even uncoordinated, reflects the conflicts between ideals and reality. The young lovers, despite the threat of death, continue with their discussion of ideal, faith and anticipation.

Young Man, Young Man unfolds in a fragmented structure, reconstructing Yang Fudong’s recollections of his 1980s adolescence in a Beijing military compound, along with scattered memories of collective life in the post-socialist era. In the film, young boys run, practice martial arts, wait for the bus, splash in water, and play in cornfields. There is no fixed narrative; instead, the boys seem to drift through an endless summer. Yet an undercurrent of distance and estrangement suggests that childhood has already quietly slipped away. These moments of adolescent innocence and loneliness, crystalized within the film, form a dreamlike allegory.

The film depicts a young man, or rather four young men, as they try to retain the sentimental feeling that is about to escape them when the sun comes up in the morning. In the expectations that they would never meet, they dressed up in the old military uniform and bathed in the morning sun. Their yawning drifts away with the wind; a wooden sword is the only attainable thing in their arms. The puppet-like laziness is shattered by the dancing sword, and they communicate in the anger of love and hate, but no real pain is ever felt. They attempt to capture the fiber of Peking Opera within the melody, but are accidentally brought above the city sky of their memories.

Father’s Fireworks is a short film the artist edited out of footage of daily life that he had previously shot. The film first depicts a worrisome and loving letter written by Yang Fudong's father to Yang Fudong through textual still frames, after which it shows the artist’s father setting off fireworks in celebration of the New Year.

Early short film by Yang Fudong.

A culmination of artist Yang Fudong's film practice over two decades, Sparrow on the Sea presents a nonlinear narrative following Mr. Ng, a mysterious man dressed in a dark Chinese robe and a fedora, carrying a suitcase, who traverses the varied terrains of Hong Kong.

Video installation (1 overhead projector, 24 small black and white TV sets, 6 big TV sets). expressionless men in suits amuse themselves by playing around in boats, swimming, and hiding behind trees in scenes set in a garden. The scenes appear to be daydreams. Yang says that he choose to create this affect after noticing the way people playing in gardens tend to give free rein to their imagination and enter their own fantasy world. The arched gateway represents the border between the real world and the other, enchanted land beyond. In the actual installation, a number of small monitors are embedded in a large screen onto which an image of the garden is projected, each depicting men swimming naked.

Wandering in the bustling streets, old-fashioned lanes and ruins of diverse-style architectures, two young man were performing singing(chang, 唱), dialogue(nian,念), acting(zuo, 做), acrobatics(da,打), in good order and well arranged. Though living in a daily and routine scene, what they were experiencing was unique and different "enjoyable dream life."

8-channel video installation, 35mm b&w film transferred to DVD. Music by Jin Wang. A freeze-frame tableau in which seven young men and women, dressed in a haberdasher’s ？nest, look outward from a rocky outcrop; boats slowly drifting across placid waters; lush, unpopulated landscapes dominated by mountains. Like all of Yang Fudong’s work, the narrative is loosely structured, favoring centripetal forces over linear paths. Here, glamorous young men and women are slowly pulled together as, alone or in pairs and quartets, they wend their way toward the eponymous bridge to catch a last glimpse of winter snow; the rabbits, parrots, and stubborn goats on leashes that accompany them hint at the dandyish excess of a bygone era.