BEIJING.- Galerie Urs Meile opened Landscape As Body, Han Yong’s (b. 1978) first exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition presents a selection of Han’s works from different time periods that encapsulate his life experiences and the evolving relationship between the artist and the world around him. Han’s practice unfolds at the intersection of his body, spirit, and landscapes, exploring the intertwined relationship between the external world and personal experiences, emotions, and memories.
Han Yong was born in Yanbian, on the border of northeastern China. The region’s geographical and cultural uniqueness gives him broader horizons, without the constraints of established frameworks within traditional inland Chinese culture. While studying painting at Yanbian University, he yearned to engage with art-historical discourses and immerse himself in grand narratives. However, through his thorough practice, he has shifted back towards his personal experience and everyday life. Ordinary and authentic life moments have become the most sentimental expressions in his works.
Sketching in the Bee Farm (2026) derives from his real-life observations at bee farms near his residence on the rural outskirts of Beijing. In the scene, he records beekeepers collecting beehives from boxes. As a habitual hiker in his daily life, Han always carries a sketchbook to record while he explores the mountains surrounding his village, capturing scenes he encounters along the way. The artist has formed a very stable relationship with the landscapes around him. They are not only physical surroundings, but also repositories of his emotion, memories, and personal experiences. Through his works, landscape extends from his own body and unfolds his traces of encountering with the world.
The exhibition also displays a group of portraits by the artist. Most of them capture moments of himself, his wife, or people around him. For example, Food Preparation I (2026) portrays the artist’s friend feeding his dogs. The body serves as the medium through which individuals encounter and understand the world. Han’s portraits genuinely depict how the body interacts with the external world. Gestures, interactions, and physical presence become ways of expressing emotional bonds and revealing the relationships that shape everyday existence.
Such sensitivity to “physical presence” also permeates his daily life. Beyond the canvas, Han Yong also sketches spontaneous ideas on surfaces in his home—walls, door frames, drawers, chairs, and roof tiles. He also collects stones from the mountains to record his fleeting impressions.
Han’s works are filled with compassion, affection, and lingering mundanity. At the same time, an intangible dimension emerges from these specific encounters. Through empathy and reflection, ordinary moments acquire deeper significance; sacred scenes emerge from everyday life. The body is the temple of spirit. Drawing from Christian imagery and narratives, Han brings religious elements into familiar surroundings, transforming them from distant or solemn representations into intimate and approachable experiences.
Those familiar moments, encounters, and surroundings are no longer scattered throughout daily existence; through the artist’s apt interpretation, they are transformed from the private into the universal, and ultimately crystallized into intimate reflections of lived experiences. At this point, the body becomes the landscape, and the landscape is the body.
Han Yong was born in 1978 in Yanbian, Jilin, China. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Yanbian University in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree. In 2008, he graduated from the Fourth studio of the Oil Painting Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a master’s degree. Han Yong currently lives and works in Beijing.
