“The Moonlight, Full Moon.” Courtesy Galerie Paris-Beijing. © Yang Yongliang

Photographer Yang Yongliang studied traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy with the great master Yang Yang in Shanghai. Today, Yongliang cleverly combines this ancient art with photography and new medias to create both a futuristic and age-old world. His pictures represent the contemporary Shanshui, a style of Chinese painting that depicts scenery or natural landscapes, using a brush and ink rather than more conventional paints. “The Silent Valley”, a solo exhibition of photography and video, opens today at Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris, France, and runs through April 27th. Yongliang was born in Shanghai, and currently teaches at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art.

“The Moonlight, New Moon,” 2012. Courtesy Galerie Paris-Beijing. © Yang Yongliang

“A Bowl of Taipei, n. 2,” 2012. Courtesy Galerie Paris-Beijing. © Yang Yongliang

“A Bowl of Taipei n. 5,” 2012. Courtesy Galerie Paris-Beijing. © Yang Yongliang

“The Silent Valley, Scorpion and Missle,” 2012. Courtesy Galerie Paris-Beijing. © Yang Yongliang

“The Silent Valley, Crocodile and Shotgun,” 2012. Courtesy Galerie Paris-Beijing. © Yang Yongliang

© Liu Bolin/Courtesy of Galerie Paris-Beijing.  Hide in the City, Panda, 2012.

Liu Bolin, also known as ‘the chameleon man’ is a Chinese artist (b. 1973) who disguises himself in his surroundings, constantly playing along the boundary between visibility and invisibility. Using various media including sculpture, body art, painting, and photography, Liu Bolin creates performance art installations where he poses motionless for hours, completely swallowed up by the environment. He eschews Photoshop post-production, and makes meticulous use instead of painting and perspective–and many test shots–to capture the camouflage effects of his installations on film.

Liu Bolin’s solo exhibition, Hiding in the City, will open on January 10th in the gallery‘s Paris space and remain on view until March 9, 2013.

-Courtesy of Galerie Paris-Beijing.

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© Kim In Sook.

New Photography in Korea II is now on view in Paris at Galerie Paris Beijing. The exhibition features works by a dozen young Koreans “on the cusp of international recognition,” according to the curators. “[Their work] represents principal currents in contemporary Korean photography: Urbanisation, globalisation, consumption, identity, culture, memory, family, sexuality, the fabric of society…” The exhibition closes October 29.

Above: In her series Saturday Night, Kim In Sook constructs the fantasy of every voyeur: The curtains are wide open in all 66 windows of a hotel, shamelessly exposing the occupants as they go about their business, some of it quite intimate.

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© Catherine Nelson/Galerie Paris-Beijing.

As a contemporary ode to Nature, the image series “Creation” by Catherine Nelson contains sublime and dreamlike elements, staged as serenely revolving spheres. Photographs of nature are blended with digital techniques to give shape to these transcendental landscapes. Every image is meticulously composed with thousands of precisely assembled details, capturing the essence and peaceful strength of various imaginary places. Nelson’s photographs are on view at Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris until June 2, 2011.

© Park Seung Hoon/Galerie Paris-Beijing. Above: Textus #017, 2009.

New Photography in Korea, the upcoming exhibition at Galerie Paris-Beijing, showcases a dozen photographers based in Korea, who are now on the cusp of international recognition. But it refers mainly to South Korea, the small discreet country in between China and Japan, who most often appears in the media because of the conflict with its awkward brother, North Korea. Since the 1980s we have been witness to lightning growth in “The Land of the Morning Calm”. The path that South Korea has taken since the devastating Korean War (1950-53) has, in only a few decades, transformed it from being a Third World country into a fully industrialized nation. One only needs to be there to appreciate its economic as well as cultural vitality, its perpetually changing urban landscapes, and its incredibly dynamic art scene led most notably by its cinema and museums, festivals, contemporary art fairs and other biennials of international scope. Not a day goes by without a new gallery opening in Seoul.

Urbanization, globalization, consumption, identity, culture, memory, family, sexuality, the fabric of society – these are the currents in contemporary Korean photography that are represented in the variety of themes addressed by this generation born out of the Korean miracle. To find out more about the exhibit click here.

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