Yang adds modern touch to conventional art

Traditional Chinese painting - especially ink-and-wash painting - has not taken too many local artists to the global arena. For centuries, their work centered around contrasting black with white and light with dark using varying densities of black ink. The artists have consciously or unconsciously worked toward finding a "way out" for their craft.

But Yang Ermin, 50, has shown how the art form can thrive by giving it a modern touch. He has added unconventional splashes of bright color to traditional ink-and-wash paintings.

An exhibition of Yang's new ink paintings, titled The Dream of the Future, opened on July 5 in Lodeve, a town in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France.