The concepts in Yang Zhenzhong's works are intricately layered and thought-provoking. The constant advancement of the conceptual aspects drives the development of the work's highly experimental selection of material, style, and execution. The stream of thought invoked by curiosity and critical awareness transforms with the shift in his attention to a given problematic area that he is concerned with, it is during this process that he stretches out his vitality.
Because of his constantly shifting focus, apart from mirrors and metals bars, there are few recurring materials in his work. Instead, Yang Zhenzhong constantly refreshes our perceptions and expressions of the basic conditions of contemporary existence that deal with the tension between truth/illusion, private/public in the age of the spectacle.
In his 2009 work Black Board, he began using mirrors and bars to show viewers their own mirrored image seen through the bars of the apparently open space, rendering members of the audience confused and not knowing whether they were inside or outside the cage. In 2013, mirrors and bars were placed on several of the walls, causing the mirrored images to converge and overlap, creating multiple images of people "inside and outside the cages" adding to the viewer's disorientation. In 2017, Fence a spatial installation in Beijing's Arrow Factory, consisted of a "two-sided mirror" attached to an iron grille on the wall facing the street and in the wall was a camera. When people who are usually in hurry saw the mirror on the wall, they instinctively paused to look at themselves in the mirror, completely unaware that there was a camera situated behind the two-way mirror.
In the work "Cube" produced for this exhibition at HOW Art Museum, Yang Zhenzhong uses mirrors and red fire hydrant pipes to form a large cube. On the ground, four mirrored walls conceal mysteries, while the walls of the exhibition hall have their own settings. Once the audience intervenes into the set of visual relations he has established, they will generate mirrored and filmed images, which will then reflect and overlap on each other generating a constant flow of new information and meaning....
In the world of the spectacle, illusion is in a constant state of metamorphosis, false appearances are more enticing and charming than the truth, and so truth is "ashamed of itself" and forced to retreat. People immersed in screens and reflections have long been unable to find the border between truth and illusion. Cameras are everywhere, personal information is collected and analyzed by machines day and night, and there is no way to secure one's own personal privacy. At times we even give up our privacy willingly… This installation by Yang Zhenzhong adds spectacle to the society of the spectacle, tempting people to look in the mirror in a world of mirrored images, doubling down on being open in an era of openness, inviting the viewer to grow in their own experience of looking in the mirror.
Project, How Art Museum
