Yang Xinguang was born in 1980 in the province of Hunan. He graduated from the sculpture school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2007. He was was included in the Hugo Boss Asia Art award in 2015. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China
Yang creates sculptures from wood, gold, earth and stone in their natural states. He draws inspiration from the arte povera and mono-ha movements, sharing their attachment to common objects and their distancing of the artist from mainstream practices. He is known to work on his materials in ways that suggests a kind of violent attack – lashing rice paper with a whip or battering sheets of gold. He seem intent on leaving a mark rather than making a point.
His solo exhibitions include: Yang Xinguang, Beijing Commune (2015); Annealing | Glass Intestine, Shanghai Museum of Glass (2016); and annual exhibitions at the Beijing Commune since 2015. Group exhibitions include Visibility, Shi Jia Zhuang Art Museum, Hubei (2013); Contemporary Art in China 1990-2012, Zhong Gallery, Berlin (2013); The Third Criticism Art Language, Times Art Museum, Beijing (2014); Editing the Spectacle – the Individual and Working Methods Post-Mediatization at the Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015); The System of Objects, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2015); and Forty years of Sculpture, Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition (MOCAPE), Shenzhen (2017).