Wu Yang, a versatile artist, has embarked on an incredible journey through various careers, ultimately finding her passion in creating mesmerizing paintings that blend dreamy surrealism with softly patterned fabrics draped around stones in remote landscapes. Graduating from the esteemed Central Academy of Arts & Design (CAAD), she studied textile and fashion design in both Beijing and London. Her early career began as a textile designer, but she quickly advanced and established her own fashion brand in 1996.
Wu Yang's artistic journey took her back to CAAD, where she served as a faculty member for a time before becoming a visiting professor at Renmin University's Art Academy. In 2005, she shifted her focus towards illustrating for publications and children's books, a pursuit she continued until 2018. Throughout these various experiences, her love for patterned fabrics remained a constant, eventually emerging as the central element in her distinctive surreal landscape paintings, rendered in sumptuous pastel or oil mediums.
In her 2022 solo exhibition, Icarus Island, Wu Yang masterfully combines the gentle splendor of fabric with the striking simplicity of quartz stones. Far from being contradictory, these two elements harmoniously complement each other in her work. The interplay between the hard surface of the stones and the silky softness of the fabric creates a dreamlike balance of power and beauty, encapsulating the essence of Wu Yang's unique artistic vision within the union of quartz and cloth.
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