Family Life

Press Release Family Life Yu Yang March 7, 2022 – March 8, 2022 Cookhouse Gallery The raw materials of Yu Yang's works are familiar, mostly mass-produced things: cups, a fridge, biscuits, as well as organic matter, such as onion, twig. And yet, his works — made through a meditative consideration of how these materials are combined in a room — convey something retreat and restraint. In the exhibition Family Life, the artist highlights the contours of his work that exist between the public and private spheres through the portrayal of a hidden emotion prevalent in family life, pulling back and forth between the political and the intimate, the collective and the individual, the great universal narrative and the everyday gesture in his works and exploring how social issues are reflected in family life. Yu Yang is a Chinese artist who grew up in northern China, where he studied chemistry and chemical engineering in Yinchuan Ningxia. His experience contributes to the fact that many of his pieces explore the idea of borders. By subtly intervening and distorting a particular space, he examines the tendency of societies to systematize and structure existence and to organize the world in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Using everyday activities and objects as a form of raw material, Yu Yang’s work questions the nuances between private and public, inside and outside, representation and reality. Yu Yang（于炀） was born in 1991 in China, currently lives and works in London. His art practice is based on the re-editing and re-enactment of everyday life, seeking to refine its political and poetic essences. He explores blurring the boundaries between art and everyday life through artistic interventions to challenge the traditional position between artist and non-artist, artwork and audience, public and private. Recent exhibitions include Street on the Walk, Willesden Gallery, London (2022); Member Show 2021, GENERATORprojects, Dundee (2021); RSA Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh (2021); Recorded Action Web, Bbeyond, Belfast (2021). For more information, please contact: [email protected] Yu Yang *All possible thanks to my friends: Bai Lin, Duanqing Wan, Jingwen Weng, Qihan Yan, Yang Li, Ziyan Zhang*