Bruce Silverstein Gallery is pleased to announce the first New York exhibition by Chinese artist Yao Lu, opening Thursday, October 29th, 2009. Yao Lu has created a thoughtful and timely series inspired by traditional Chinese paintings entitled New Landscapes in which mounds of garbage covered in green protective nets are assembled and reworked by computer to create images of rural mountain landscapes shrouded in the mist. Lying somewhere between painting and photography, and between the past and the present, Yao Lu's work speaks of the radical mutations affecting nature in China as it is subjected to rampant urbanization and the ecological threats that endanger the environment.
According to Lu, “Today China is developing dramatically and many things are under constant construction. Meanwhile many things have disappeared and continue to disappear. The rubbish dumps covered with the 'shield', a green netting, are a ubiquitous phenomenon in China.”
Born in 1967 in Beijing, Yao Lu attended Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). Lu’s work has rarely been seen in the West, except at the Fotofest Biennial in 2008, and the "Space and Transportation" exhibition in Graz, Austria in 1997. In 2009, Lu was short-listed for the prestigious Prix Pictet award, and in 2008 he won the Paris Photo BMW Prize for contemporary photography. His work has been shown in numerous festivals and collective exhibitions around China: Lianzhou International Photo Festival 2007, New China Occidentalism – China Contemporary Art in Beijing in 2006, Pingyao International Photography Festival in 2004. Currently, Lu lives and works in Beijing.
