John Young (Ze Runge) was born in Hong Kong in 1956 and moved to Australia in 1967 at the time of the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution' in China. He read philosophy, trained as a painter and later taught at the Sydney College of the Arts, at the University of Sydney. Since 1998 he has been living and working between Melbourne and Hong Kong, on exhibitions and public art projects, with a particular focus on the impact of globalization and technology on the historical tradition of painting.

Young has produced a substantial body of work over the last 25 years, exploring most importantly the crossing of traditions and the heritage of modernism within a post-modern and post-colonial context. His experience of living as a Chinese artist of the diaspora has allowed him a transcultural perspective - a condition we all face in a technological, virtual and globalised world.

This exhibition, his first in Israel, will provide a selection of recent works from the Double Ground series, a twelve-year investigation that unites all of his ideas. Utilising printed backgrounds from sources ranging from classical Chinese and ancient Persian art, to computerised techno-patterns, and recently what he terms 'Refugee Patterns'; he combines these with subtle, meticulously painted foregrounds drawn from the generic painting traditions of still life, the figure and the landscape.

John Young has represented Australia many times in major group exhibitions in Asia, Europe and the USA, including in 1995, Antipodean Currents at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In November this year TarraWarra Museum of Art, Melbourne, will mount a survey exhibition of Young's work titled Orient/Occident: John Young: a Survey, 1978-2005 which will be complimented by the publication of a monograph on his oeuvre by Craftsman House (Thames & Hudson).

John Young has been represented in Australia for 18 years by Anna Schwartz Gallery, which has great pleasure in participating in this project.

"This suite of paintings is dedicated to those who take the void path, who see the sun rise from the empty ocean's horizon, to those who globally seek refuge, those people who otherwise would be made invisible or vaporize into infinity in this globalized techno battlefield for speed and time. I have also included several "Love Song" paintings in this exhibition - for those optimistic but nameless children, who are caught in the midst of the follies of profit, politics and brutal will."

John Young