Page spread featuring Di Yang in Future Greats, ArtReview China. © ArtReview. Courtesy of the artist.
Nan Ke Gallery is pleased to announce that represented artist Di Yang has been named to ArtReview’s “Future Greats” list.
This year, the Chinese edition of ArtReview invited a group of uniquely connected nominators to participate in the selection process. Rather than critics or curators in the conventional sense, these individuals are practitioners deeply embedded within the artistic ecosystem. Many of them have themselves been included in the “Future Greats” list at different stages of their careers. As such, what they offer is not an external evaluation, but a perspective from within a viewpoint shaped by fellow artists and peers.
Installation view of Enrichment, November 7, 2023 - December 10, 2023, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai © Di Yang. Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery.
Di Yang (b. 1990, Suzhou, China; BFA from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute; graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2020, receiving both the Graduate Award and the Meisterschüler honor) approaches video installation as a form of “spatial sculpture.” Nominator Tao Hui, who also works primarily with video and installation, noted that in Di Yang’s exhibition Enrichment (2023), the artist “uses video, sound, sculpture, and painting as ‘words’ within a sentence, shaping the entire exhibition into a ‘sentence’ that explores appearance, identity, and consumerism,” demonstrating a sophisticated command of multiple media.
Café Crush ，（Still frame） 2023 ，Dual-channel，3'40"
Di Yang’s practice spans video installation, photography, painting, and curatorial projects. His work carries a distinctive sense of allure. Through interweaving future scenarios and historical narratives, he constructs a particular mode of reading in which viewers are simultaneously immersed and held at a reflective distance. By orchestrating moving images and spatial configurations, he examines how emotion, memory, and power are rearranged and presented within the exhibition context.
Cheap Fiction, 2020, video installation (HD video, 18K gold ring, ceramic tiles), 8'30"; installation view at "Spiritual Nourishment," 2025, Outer Space, Beijing; photo: Ding Ding.
Rather than rushing toward grand conclusions, Di Yang assembles fragments of memory and emotional fissures into a texture of the present through an artistic syntax. Like a meticulous collector, he gathers fragments of everyday imagery, narrative templates from online fiction, and even shared patterns of generational consumption as valuable “cultural samples.” As a result, his work sustains both conceptual depth and a lingering sensibility, retaining a quiet emotional resonance alongside its critical framework.
Drift Memorial, 2024, interactive video installation, commissioned by Suzhou Contemporary Art Museum; installation view at the eponymous exhibition, 2024, Suzhou Contemporary Art Museum.
March 28, 2026
