Yang Shaobin was born in 1963 in Tangshan, Hebei Province, China. He graduated from the Polytechnic University in Hebei, China in 1991. In the early 1990’s he moved to Beijing to join an avant- garde art group. Shaobin tries to elicit discomfort and pain from his viewers to create a sense of social consciousness and political commentary in his works. His use of the color red symbolizes human vitality, capitalist greed, as well as the iconography of the Cultural Revolution.
Yang’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions such as Blue Room, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013); Blue Room, UCCA Centre for Contemporary Arts, Beijing, China (2010); First Steps-Last Words,Museu de Arts de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2009) and Yang Shaobin, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia (2007). His recent group exhibitions include Scarcity & Supply, The 3rd Nanjing International Art Festival, Phoenix Mountain Art Park, Nanjing, China (2016); RE-PORTRAIT:A FIGURE RESEARCH - ON WHAT IS EXPRESSED OR DEVELOPS TO EXPRESS AT PRESENT, Songzhuang Museum, Beijing, China (2016); HARMONY - International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Tianjin Art Museum, Tianjin, China（2016); The Civil Power, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China (2015); 5th “Art Changsha” Parallel Exhibition, Fragments of narrative, Changsha Museum, Changsha, China (2015); We, Songzhuang Museum, Beijing, China (2013); Chinese Expressionism, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Haw Art Museum, Wenzhou, China (2012); Coal + Ice, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, China (2011); Reshaping History: China Art 2000-2009, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2010); Chinese contemporary art three years history, Minsheng Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (2010); Body, Shangdong Contemporary Art Center, Nanjing, China (2009); Half-Life, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2008); Motion, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China (2008); Building Code Violations, Long March Space, Beijing, China (2006); Chinese Sculptures, Museum Beelden aan Zee, Hague, Netherlands (2005); The Gravity of the Immaterial, Total Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2005); China: Bodies Everywhere, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France (2004).
Yang currently lives and works in Beijing, China.