Huang Yong Ping is a contemporary French visual artist of Chinese origin. Huang's work combines many media and cultural influence, but is particularly strongly influence by the intellectual abstraction of Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

 and by Chinese numerology

Numerology

Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...

 traditions. Founder of the Xiamen Dada group in China in the 1980s, Huang's installations have included unorthodox materials such as live snakes and scorpions. Many of Huang's sculptural works encompass a large scale, some tens of meters in dimension.

Major exhibits

The House of Oracles retrospective on Huang's work was shown at the Walker Art Center

Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...

, from October 16, 2005 through January 15, 2006, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, commonly referred to as MASS MoCA, is a museum in a converted factory building located in North Adams, Massachusetts, USA. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing arts in the country.MASS MoCA opened with 19...

 from March 18, 2006 to February 25, 2007, at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Vancouver Art Gallery

The Vancouver Art Gallery is the fifth-largest art gallery in Canada and the largest in Western Canada. It is located at 750 Hornby Street in Vancouver, British Columbia...

 from April 5 to September 16, 2007, and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing from March 22 to June 8, 2008. The program to this retrospective describes Huang's work as:

Huang's sculptures and installations—drawing on the legacies of Joseph Beuys, Arte Povera, and John Cage as well as traditional Chinese art and philosophy—routinely juxtapose traditional objects or iconic images with modern references.

In 1996, Huang Yong Ping took part in Manifesta

Manifesta

Manifesta, the , is a European pan-regional contemporary cultural biennale, described in 2010 by the as "stunning in its scope and uncompromisingly experimental in its approach".-Manifesta History:...

, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, in 1997 Huang participated in "Skulptur.Projekte"

Skulptur Projekte Münster

Skulptur Projekte Münster is an exhibition of sculptures in public places in the town of Münster...

 in Muenster, Germany with his skulpture "100 Arms of Guan-yin".

During 2008, Huang's work is on display at the Astrup Fearnley museum of modern art in Oslo, Norway.
This is his first solo show in Norway.

For his first UK solo show in The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery

Barbican Centre

The Barbican Centre is the largest performing arts centre in Europe. Located in the City of London, England, the Centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory...

, London, Huang Yong Ping creates a new installation that explores the imperial history between Britain and China in the 19th century, focusing on the Opium Wars. The exhibition takes its title Frolic from the name of a ship built to transport goods between British India, China and Great Britain. The exhibition is on from 25 June-21 September 2008.

Controversy

Huang's work Bat Project 2 was planned as a massive outdoor installation at the opening of China's First Guangzhou Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art. Two days before the show opening, on November 16, 2002, foreign ministry officials removed the work, then partially completed. The work, which was recreated in part in Huang's House of Oracles retrospective, was a full-scale model of the cockpit section and left wing of an American EP-3 spy plane, filled with taxodermically preserved bats. The plane modeled the one that collided with a Chinese fighter jet in March 2001, killing the Chinese pilot.

The 2008 exhibition of his piece, Theatre of the World, at the Vancouver Art Gallery met with Animal Rights protests and legal threats due to its reliance on the violent interaction between insects in an enclosed space. The work was part of House of Oracles, his travelling retrospective exhibition.

External links

• Gladstone gallery (530 West 21 Street, Chelsea, New York City) is showing a new large-scale installation, shaped as a huge coiled snake skeleton. Viewers can climb from the tail to the head on a bamboo ramp, through the arches of the skeleton. From 1 May until 31 July 2009.
• Frolic is on from 25 June-21 September 2008 at Barbican Art Gallery, The Curve, London
• House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective is on exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
  Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
  The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, commonly referred to as MASS MoCA, is a museum in a converted factory building located in North Adams, Massachusetts, USA. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing arts in the country.MASS MoCA opened with 19...
  
  during 2006.

• http://www.fundacionnmac.org/english/coleccion.php?id=70 [Huang Yong Ping at the NMAC Foundation]