Yang Yongliang was born in 1980 in Jia Ding, Shanghai. His Phantom Landscapes are masterpieces of artificial realisation. He combines elements of traditional Chinese painting (in which he was schooled, in particular calligraphy) with modern Shanghai landscapes, with incredible details revealing aspects of current urban life. Viewed closely within the whorls of clouds and dense forestry, one finds scenes of construction sites, cranes and traffic lights, a plethora of familiar city landmarks. He perfectly handles contradictions between ephemeral and solid form, so as to make the entire image poetically harmonious.

Yang Yongliang graduated from the Shanghai Fine Art Institute in 1995 and in 1999 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. In 2006 he became a tutor at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art.