The Day of Perpetual Night Link.
I chose Yang Yongliang, a Chinese artist, and his piece of art, “The Day of Perpetual Night.”
In this artwork, he works with black and white, creating an illusion as if you are viewing this city from the dark night sky. He creates an almost inverted look to the piece by mashing together other artworks with an expert photography skill.. The city lights create a definition against the dark mountains, giving an odd “futuristic city in the mountains” look. The texture of the mountains also gives a lot of shadows and definition that differs from the smooth shapes of the bodies of water, buildings, and roads.
The title being “The Day of Perpetual Night,” I believe represents an eclipse, thus it being “night” but still “daytime.” I believe this work of art is a clash of modern and older art, older being more traditional representing the mountains and the shapes formed, and the modern being the cities with the smooth curves and bright lights. The two different parts of the piece create a definition, dividing the work into two separate worlds themselves. In other works the nature is big, thick and blocky much like older art works, but the modern things in his works like cars, buildings, and etc. shows a modern take on the representation of the modern world.
With the colors black and white, he shows again, a definition in the modern and older worlds. The sky high sky scrapers, the bright flashing lights, and the zooming movement of the cars is colored white, a modern take. The rough and textured mountains, and the dark, gloomy sky, and the skinny weak trees in black almost shows a battle between light and dark, nature and the modern world. I believe this piece depicts two different worlds of art. The shadows of yesterday are shown by the shadows of the mountains on the city, caused by the brightness and “pop” of today, shown by the bright, moving city.
The different elements of this artwork, being other contradictory pieces all mashed together creates an odd and beautiful harmony between future and olden. The artwork is displayed as four photos, creating a look of the flow of time with the flashing city lights moving in and out of the piece. The concept of the artwork is the ever-flowing and changing of our time and reality, giving the piece a really unique look. It is an odd balance of tasteful photos and odd pieces of works the fit into each other, giving a nice finish to the piece.
