Yang Jiechang
Yang Jiechang has long been at the forefront of China’s Cantonese art scene and has gained acclaim for both his ink-based abstractions and his experimental works, through which he challenges Chinese traditions with a fierce contemporary spirit. Yang’s own personal history reflects the tremendous upheavals of the late 20th-century in China—as a teenager he was a member of the Chinese Red Brigade, but, in dramatic rebellion, he decided to pursue a career as an artist. After graduating with a degree in painting, he deeply immersed himself in the study of Tao. Of leaving behind an adolescence filled with the red of patriotism and communism for Taoism, the artist has said, “I entered into a black and gray world.”
That perceived shift from searing red to austerity became a vital part of the artist’s work; he disavowed color, symbolism, and realism in favor of minimal compositions in ink and collaged rice paper. In 1989, Yang achieved his breakthrough when his large-scale monochromatic ink paintings were included in the seminal exhibition “Les magiciens de la terre” at Paris’s Centre Pompidou. Today, Yang’s work continues to blend traditional Chinese modes of representation with the pared-down aesthetics of Western movements such as Minimalism, Conceptualism, …
Yang Jiechang has long been at the forefront of China’s Cantonese art scene and has gained acclaim for both his ink-based abstractions and his experimental works, through which he challenges Chinese traditions with a fierce contemporary spirit. Yang’s own personal history reflects the tremendous upheavals of the late 20th-century in China—as a teenager he was a member of the Chinese Red Brigade, but, in dramatic rebellion, he decided to pursue a career as an artist. After graduating with a degree in painting, he deeply immersed himself in the study of Tao. Of leaving behind an adolescence filled with the red of patriotism and communism for Taoism, the artist has said, “I entered into a black and gray world.”
That perceived shift from searing red to austerity became a vital part of the artist’s work; he disavowed color, symbolism, and realism in favor of minimal compositions in ink and collaged rice paper. In 1989, Yang achieved his breakthrough when his large-scale monochromatic ink paintings were included in the seminal exhibition “Les magiciens de la terre” at Paris’s Centre Pompidou. Today, Yang’s work continues to blend traditional Chinese modes of representation with the pared-down aesthetics of Western movements such as Minimalism, Conceptualism, and abstraction. In one work, Oh My God!, Yang conflates thick calligraphic text and repeats the title until the words have become more of a pattern than a source of linguistic meaning. While his work takes inspiration from the West, Yang also uses distinctly Chinese materials such as silk, porcelain, and Chinese ink, in addition to neon, gauze, paint, and found objects.
Yang’s work has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Venice Biennale, among numerous other biennials, museums, and galleries around the world.
