They were dedicated to creating a new cultural identity and bridging Western Modernism and Chinese traditions of Taoism and Zen. In 1989 Huang Yong Ping was invited to Paris to participate in the seminal exhibition Magicians of the Earth, at the Pompidou Centre Paris. Following this exhibition and the events in Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989, Huang Yong Ping relocated to Paris to live and work.

Huang Yong Ping is a prominent figure in the international art scene. One of his most controversial works, Bat Project involved the partially reconstructed of full-scale sections of a surveillance aircraft known as the 'bat'. This politically sensitive work refers to an American spy plane that collided in 2001 with a Chinese fighter jet killing the Chinese pilot before making an emergency landing in the southern Chinese Island of Hainan. The crew was eventually released and the spy plane disassembled and returned. Huang's Bat Project has caused diplomatic tensions among Chinese, French, and American officials in its various configurations, some of which have been censored.

Bat Project IV

Huang Yong Ping has been the subject of a major museum retrospective, House of Oracles, organised by The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2005.

House of Oracles has subsequently toured to Mass MoCa, Massachusetts, 2006, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2007 and is currently on show at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. Huang Yong Ping opens a new exhibition, Ping Pong in April 2008 at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo.

This exhibition is part of CHINA NOW the UK's largest ever festival of Chinese culture.

Huang Yong Ping
Frolic
The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London
June25 - September 21 2008
Admission Free
The exhibition is supported by the Institut Français

(China.org.cn May 30, 2008)