Foreplay

The desire to challenge normative notions and fixed formats of social behavior informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong's work. He is pre-occupied with a tendency to invert the order of things and often touches upon cultural conventions and out-dated social norms. He uses his diverse aesthetic language to describe what it is that makes up a community, with its functions, its exchanges, its rules and its behaviors. Yang Zhenzhong's playful videos, installations and photographs are more than visual reflections; they are intelligent comments on the design of contemporary society.

With a sincere attitude, but in a playful manner, the artist explores the contemporary preoccupation with questions of identity and perception, and the ability of images to turn apathy into anticipation, and ordinariness into desirability. He uses part fiction and part reality that tangles both the euphoric enthusiasm and deep anxiety of day-to-day experience. His work has lately been described as “an extraordinary distillation of an artistic practice that couldn’t be more preoccupied with the nature of what is real”.

Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhenzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. Yang Zhenzhong's work has showed at major international exhibitions, biennales and triennials. Recent exhibitions include China Contemporary – Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boiman van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2006), Yang Zhenzhong Solo-Exhibition, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2006), and China Power Station – Part I, Battersea Power Station – The Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2006).