Dallas Asian

China: Impermanent Beauty 1996-97

The inauguration of the newly dedicated gallery space at the Crow Collection, LinkAsia, will present art works that provide a contemporary global path to understanding Asia through unique perspectives and mediums. Coinciding with the reveal of the space is yet another launch, Ka Yeung.

Born in 1953, in Hong Kong, Ka Yeung has built a body of personal work in the photography medium that will be presented for the first time. During the past thirty years of his commercial photography career, Yeung has continued to extend his personal vision to subjects that express his spiritual and poetic nature.

While visiting China in 1996-97, Yeung wished to specifically view the Yangtze River (Long River) before the middle stream was flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. A large part of Chinese history relates to this river and for Yeung, it is a significant example of change in our world.

The scale of the black and white prints endeavor to bring the viewer to the forefront of his discoveries and provide a portal into a fading landscape, a city of contrasts, a layered garden wall crumbling, a bicycle parking area obsolete while still in use. The images hold the viewer in the present and allow an initial reaction of still, tranquil beauty to dream, without a melancholy longing for faded beauty. The power of the photography is in the documentation that was, and is, the past, along with the future. There is no difference and no sentimental desire. We can see through the eyes of Yeung that the simplest of views and objects are the beauty of the moment, as nothing is permanent.