"Yang Fudong: The General's Smile"
2009-12-19 until 2010-03-28
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
Tokyo, , JP

The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Japan by Yang Fudong, a Chinese film artist who has been highly active on the international scene in recent years. As an artist with a strong attachment to 35mm film, Yang creates films that are noted for their unique, finely grained textural quality and the use of highly refined and perfectly composed imagery. His films--at times documentary in tone, at times theatrical--depict fragments of contemporary Chinese society, transforming at dazzling speed, and the people who live within it.

This exhibition introduces the magic of Yang Fudong’s world by presenting a number of his cinematic gems, some being shown in Japan for the first time. These include The General’s Smile (2009), a large-scale video installation about the universality of human life presented in a scene of a banquet held for a senior military officer, and Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest Part 3 (2005), one part of a series that depict well-educated, modern-day young urbanites as they reveal their inner thoughts in various situations modeled after the popular tale of seven famous intellectuals in ancient China who seek refuge from the world in a bamboo forest where they engage in intellectual discourse.

YANG Fudong

Born in Beijing in 1971 and graduated from China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in 1995, Yang Fudong is garnering international attention for his photographs and films. He has shown work at numerous international exhibitions such as the 4th Shanghai Biennale(2002), Documenta 11 (2002), the 50th Venice Biennale(2003)and the 52nd Venice Biennale(2007). In Japan, his work was featured in the 1st Yokohama Triennale (2001) and the 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale(2005), as well as in many group exhibitions. He currently resides in Shanghai.

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