Yang Mian, born in 1970 in a scholarly family in Chengdu, was influenced by traditional aesthetics and family education during his youth. In 1997, he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and has been teaching at Southwest Jiaotong University since then. In 1998, he received the China Contemporary Art Award and began traveling around the world. In 2000, he was interviewed by Time magazine and featured in the October 2000 issue titled "Young Chinese." His works and personality were subsequently featured in international media reports on Chinese art, such as Forbes Life's "The Culture Evolution" in 2007.

 

Yang Mian has always been concerned about the influence of media on Chinese society, an important cultural issue.

 

From 1996 to 2005, he created the "Beauty Standard'" series using oil painting, discussing the issue of aesthetic standards for women in Chinese society and the cultural phenomenon of Chinese women's aesthetics deviating from the genetic reality of Chinese people. He pointed out who created such standards and gave them such power.

 

At the same time, Yang Mian's series of works also serves as a chronicle of the aesthetic standards for Chinese women.

 

From 2007 to 2008, Yang Mian created the "Welcome_China cultural revolution" series, using Western popular culture images as materials for diverse creations. As he wrote in a passage for his solo exhibition "Posing" at the Today Art Museum in Beijing in 2008: "They have never been to China, yet they have influenced several generations of Chinese people!" In 2009, Yang Mian began creating the CMYK series, creatively using the four colors of CMYK printing dots to discuss the impact of printed materials produced in the CMYK format on Chinese society. He questioned the reliability of this cheap way we obtain images of world civilization through printed materials, and Yang Mian presented the results of these civilizations, both Chinese and global, in his original works.

 

In 2021, Yang Mian released his latest series of works titled RGB - The Moment of Visual Persistence and proposed the academic topic of "the democracy of vision" along with the CMYK series. In these two series of works, Yang Mian's works are composed of non-adhesive color blocks. The colors perceived by viewers, other than the primary colors, are not determined by Yang Mian but are the result of the retina's optical and neurological reactions.

 

Throughout Yang Mian's over twenty-year artistic career, his art works have been published in various catalogs, such as "Beauty Standard," "2003 Yang Mian’s Standard," "2005 Yang Mian’s Standard," "Classical," "Classics: Yang Mian New Work Exhibition," "Posing 2007-2008," and "CMYK - Yang Mian's Paintings."

 

Renowned art historian Mr. Lü Peng edited a personal art book about Yang Mian's artworks titled " Visual Concepts and Standards: The Art of Yang Mian"

 

Yang Mian's artistic views and works have been included in several art histories, including "1990-1999 History of Contemporary Chinese Art," "History of Contemporary Chinese Art 2000-2010," "Contemporary Art in 21st-Century China," "Histoire de L'art Chinois au XXe siècle," "A History of Art in 20th-Century China," and "Complete Works of Contemporary Chinese Art" New Century Creation (Volume II).

 

Since the 1990s, Yang Mian's works have been widely exhibited worldwide. His works are unique in the Chinese contemporary art scene and do not belong to any particular school or trend, which is highly valued and rare in today's context.

 

Furthermore, Yang Mian's works have been widely collected globally. He is the only artist from Sichuan whose works are collected in the national ceremonial spaces of the G20 Hangzhou summit and the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai.