He often transforms and re-appropriates figures, objects, and spectacles from the urban setting into works of art for public spaces.

Yang Zhenzhong's practice focuses on conceptual art and spans multiple artistic mediums, including video, photography, installation, and art forms, such as painting and sculpture. In addition to his work as an artist, he has also taken part in curating art exhibitions. Since the late 1990s, he has co-curated more than a dozen influential contemporary art exhibitions and projects with artists Xu Zhen et al. His works adopt a cynical perspective to highlight the contradictions and chaos in social reality while addressing the ultimate issues of life and death.

He often transforms and re-appropriates figures, objects, and spectacles from the urban setting into works of art for public spaces.

It is not rare to find public space amenities such as fences, barriers, and railings in Yang Zhenzhong's work. In 2017, he realized a personal project, Fences in a non-profit art space located in Beijing’s hutong. He sealed off the original 15 square meter space, leaving only a barred window to blend in with the immediate environment. The glass window shields an interrogation room, its reflexive side facing the street, and a surveillance camera is installed on the inside, capturing the people coming and going on the street, and those who looked into the window. Setting the subtle landscape of everyday life environment as a context, the work addresses the roles of surveillance. Its complex visual maze reveals the artist’s commend of using space.

In his video Light and Easy 2, Yang Zhenzhong adopts an inverted technique to juggle the skyline of the Bund in Shanghai with the sky. His witty and humorous visual language brings public life in the external world into his moving images. This comes from the artist's subtle sensitivity for spatiality, which frees people tied to the urban environment; by tipping the city over, Yang turns the city into a playful object.

In 2000, Yang Zhenzhong launched the "I Will Die" art project, which mobilizes the public's participation internationally. He brings the public into his work by asking them to say to the camera, "I will die." Traveling to more than ten countries, he filmed hundreds of people of different ages, identities, and races, saying this phrase in 11 languages. Ultimately, this work tightened the relationship between the public and art.

In the first Thailand Biennale, which opened in 2018, Yang Zhenzhong's work To Be or Not To Be allowed art to grow in an everyday natural environment. Located on a lawn beside the Kong Ka Pier (Krabi) walkway on the island of Krabi, Thailand, this spectacular installation tests the laws of nature. The work consists of ten banyan trees planted "upside down" in a straight line. The trees' bare roots are intertwined and exposed in the air that contrasts with the lush vegetation on the island. However, this is not the only paradox of the work. By digging up the banyan trees from the ground, then turning them upside down and planting their branches back into the ground, the artist challenges and explores whether or not nature and plants can survive on their own under extreme and abnormal conditions. The work's logic transcends objective reality and penetrates a parallel landscape where buried trees and tangled roots constitute the everyday landscape.

Yang Zhenzhong

Yang Zhenzhong was born in 1968 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, and is currently based in Shanghai. As a practicing artist, Yang works primarily in the field of conceptual art with media that span from video, photography and installation to painting and sculpture. For decades, he is an active member of the international contemporary art scene and has showcased twice in the Venice Biennale (2003 and 2007). As a curator, he has collaborated with artists in Shanghai since the late 1990s and planned and initiated exhibitions including “Art For Sale”, “Dial 62761232: Express Art Exhibition” “Hipic”, and dozens of other important contemporary art shows and projects. YANG’s creations have always been centring on the issue of life and death and highlighting the multitude of contradictions and disorders in the society with a cynical attitude on one hand. On the other hand, he translates and recycles the people, objects and landscapes in everyday urban life and political space.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Surveillance and Panorama, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing (2018); Eternal Return | Вечное возвращение, Moscow Manege Museum and Exhibition Association, Russia (2014); Trespassing, YANG Zhenzhong Solo Exhibition, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai (2013); Don’t Move, Yang Zhengzhong Solo Exhibition, ShanghART, Beijing (2011); YANG ZHENZHONG, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, U.K.(2006); Light As Fuck!, BizArt, Shanghai (2002). Selected group exhibitions include: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A.(2017); Our Bright Future: Cybernetics Fantasy, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin-si, Korea (2017); Avant-Garde China: Twenty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art , The National Art Center, Tokyo (2008); Global Cities, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, U.K. (2007) etc. The artist’s works have previously exhibited in numerous prominent exhibitions including Venice Biennale (2003, 2007), Shanghai Biennale (2002, 2016), Guangzhou Biennial (2002, 2005, 2012), Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (2006), Lyon Biennale (2013) and so forth. His works can also be found in collection of significant public and private institutes such as MoMA New York, Guggenheim Museum, Ikon Gallery (U.K.), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Musée National d’Art Moderne and the UBS Collection.