Huang Yongping 2008-03-03
Asia Art Archive,
Hong Kong
“Philosophy does not end with philosophy; it also touches on notions of language, in the same way that Chan is not only about Buddhist issues but encompasses other issues as well. I thought our entire way of thinking had to change: the education we received in the past, the entire system, with social prejudices, customs and habits… all these things that formed the way we thought had to be completely eradicated. This was the most important thing: everything else was secondary, just details.“
Biography:
Huang Yongping (b.1954, Xiamen, Fujian) is a Paris-based artist.
In 1977, Huang entered the Department of Oil Painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art), as one among the first group of students to enroll there since the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, for his thesis project, Huang produced a series of paintings made with industrial paint sprayers.
After graduating, Huang became a secondary school teacher in Xiamen. There he organized a number of experimental art events, including the ‘Five-Person Exhibition’ (1983), the ‘Xiamen Dada Exhibition’ (1986) in which the Huang and his artists colleagues burned their own artwork, and an exhibition of scrap material at the Fujian Provincial Museum (1986). For the ‘China/Avant-Garde Exhibition’ in 1989, Huang exhibited A History of Chinese Painting and A Concise History of Modern Painting Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes. That same year, Huang was invited to participate in ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a city which he soon made his home.
In 1990, Huang participated in ‘Chine Demain pour Hier’, curated by Fei Dawei, and in 1999, Huang represented France in the Venice Biennale. In 2005, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis organized ‘The House of Oracles: A Huang Yongping Retrospective’ in conjunction with a comprehensive catalogue of his work. In 2008, the exhibition was presented at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.
