Yang Shaobin

Born in Tangshan, Hebei Province in 1963, Yang Shaobin is an internationally recognized painter best known for his painful and often tortured subjects. The artist moved to Beijing in the early 1990s and joined an early avant-garde art group that was based near the Old Summer Palace. Influenced by Francis Bacon and Arnulf Rainer, Yang says his works are often created to elicit discomfort or painful feelings from the viewer and to draw awareness of a social consciousness.

Yang has exhibited extensively throughout the world, including at Tate Liverpool, Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg, the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, and Jakarta's National Gallery. His work was included in the landmark exhibition of the 48th Venice Biennale of 1999 and has also been included in several influential survey exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art.