Born: China
Xiao Yang is a Buffalo based artist. She received a BFA with an emphasis in abstract Painting and Illustration from Daemen College, and currently enrolled at MFA program at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Yang’s paintings, installations, and performance have been exhibited at UB art Gallery, 1045 gallery, El Museo, and Art Space. etc.
Her work draws inspiration from the micro and macro and employs scale to explore the impact of the body’s known relationships. The fluid, unnamable abstractions often run parallel to the theme of the uncanny as the artist tries to situate herself within a new culture that is becoming more familiar and her cultural roots that are now feeling more removed, operating between being “home-like” and “unlike home” within a shift of personal identities.
The large scale paintings serve as a conduit to transmit the artist’s own presence to the viewers. The spatialized presence can be observed in the almost monolithic, towering presence of the work in a vertical format, creating the presence of a giant figure looming over. When the being is smaller than our own physicality, it is an object, a thing that can be obtained or owned. However, when the being is larger than our own physicality, it operates within a space that inverts the idea from obtainable “thing” to an unattainable “no-thing” since the only way to approach the space is to travel through the field in which it constructs and supports. Standing in front of the work, the viewer’s relationship to their body is meant to be transformed as the artist shares the sensation of her own lack of belongingness.
The fluidity based characteristic of the media itself across the boundary of definition lays between living and non-living that highlights a wrestling with the artist’s attempt to manipulate the composition while struggling with the ink’s desire to flow in every possible direction. Within this struggle between artist and medium, control and chaos, a dance of life forces are enacted. The process of creating the body of works demanded the full integration of the artist’s own physical presence rather than the limited activities of only the hands. Using these full-body actions, the artist’s presence is reincarnated in each piece of the work and enabled to trigger a spiritual dialogue with viewer through an unavoidable confrontation with the large scale works.
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration May 2016
Daemen College, Amherst, NY
GPA:4.0, Dean’s list Recipient
Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Currently Enrolled
EXHIBITIONS
Trimania: participant in group show, Tri-main Center, April 2015
Mortal Ethos: Tower Gallery, May 2016
Ensnare: Buffalo Artspace Gallery, May 2016
Solo Exhibition: El Museo, October 2016
Solo Exhibition: 1045 Gallery, June 16-July 1 2017
Non-Sequitur: UB Art Gallery (Group show), March 28-May 5 2018
Antipodal: UB Art Gallery( Group show), September 6-22 2018