Opening Reception:
17 JULY, 7 – 9 pm
Five years ago, our gallery opened with a quietly luminous act: the exhibition of Chinese-born painter Kailiang Yang. It was an exhibition of beginnings - of artistic vision, of cross-cultural resonance, and of long-term trust. This summer, we are proud to welcome him back. Not only for his second solo exhibition with us, but to mark a shared milestone - a five-year journey of friendship, painting, and silence.
Join “MEINE SONNE” on THURSDAY, JULY 17th from 7 - 9 PM.
Kailiang Yang is a painter of thresholds. His recent works - ethereal cityscapes rendered in silvery blues and muted greys - drift between the visible and the remembered. Rain-slicked streets, bridges at dusk, façades without names: the places in his paintings seem deserted, suspended in a gentle stillness, yet dense with quiet atmosphere. As in the tradition of the flâneur, Yang walks the city not to record its bustle, but to distil its soul. He paints from memory, not documentation. The result is a slow gaze, a painterly form of breathing.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is Bamboo, a five-part painting that looks from the inside out - into a garden of slender stalks and green whispers. Here, bamboo is more than subject: it becomes metaphor. For endurance, for gentleness, for continuity. In a short poem written by the artist, bamboo is described as shelter, memory, and teacher - an ancient companion to those who listen. The painting reflects that wisdom: it does not assert itself, but offers space.
Born in 1974 in Jinan, in China’s Shandong Province, Kailiang Yang was trained at the Shandong Art University before moving to Hamburg, where he studied under Norbert Schwontkowski, and Werner Büttner. He spent many years living and working in Hamburg and Berlin, where his paintings were exhibited in institutions such as KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Kunsthaus Hamburg, and Kunsthalle Dresden. His works have also been shown at the National Art Museum of China, the Shandong Art Museum, and the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, among others.
Today, Yang lives with his family in Jinan. Yet his painting continues to inhabit an in-between: between continents, between histories, between languages. He is, in the most generous sense, a cultural bridge - without ever becoming illustrative or didactic. He does not “translate” between East and West, but breathes both, simultaneously.
Alongside Bamboo, the exhibition presents a suite of smaller-format paintings: nocturnes, meditations, moments. Each one offers a fragment - of light, of place, of gesture. Assembled together, they form a painterly constellation: a quiet narrative without plot, where mood and atmosphere carry the weight of meaning.
We are honoured that Kailiang Yang will travel from China to Hamburg for the opening.
