Yang Xiaobin
Chinese.
Yang Xiaobin was born in December, 1966 in Tianshui, Gansu Province in China. In 1990, he graduated from the Gansu Tianshui Teachers College. Yang Xiaobin's works provide a refreshing perspective of modern society. His unique outlook reflects his personal outlook on the process of growing up and its integration with life in general. At first glance, the painting looks slightly naive and the elements simple, however, to truly understand Xiaobin's work, viewers need prior knowledge of the artist's intentions. Using the visual as a narrative for his ideology, Xiaobin's works are marked by two distinctive subject elements: youth and crosses. Xiaobin combines the innocence and vulnerability of children as the subject matter in his paintings with the recurring crosses that subtly hint at danger. With this contrast, Xiaobin uses the children to represent humans and the crosses to illustrate the countless changes humans undergo in their lifespan. The babies are shielded from the viewers with layers of crosses almost serving as a blanket, cocooning the babies from the outside world. When the viewer stands before the painting, the babies are effectively being protected from the viewer; thereby introducing an interactive dimension between artwork and viewer. By selecting such apt icons to illustrate the changes in human's lives, Xiaobin deftly arrests the viewer's attention while delivering a poignant message for this generation and many more generations to come. His recent exhibitions in 2006 include the New York Art Exposition and the PAI Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibition held in Beijing.


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