Yang Jiechang

b. 1956, Foshan, Guandong

Painter, multimedia installation artist

Yang Jiechang’s oeuvre consists of a variety of artistic media: painting, collage, installation, site-specific works, performance and sculpture. For Yang painting is a way of contemplation, not a means of representation. The concepts inspiring his painting, such as repetition and the overlapping of images, re-occur in his work with other media, such as his multi-media installations Zaizao Dong Cunrui [Recreate Dong Cunrui, 1999–2002] and I Saw It in the Sky (2002). Yang was trained in the techniques of paper mounting, calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting at the Fine Arts Academy Guangzhou (1978–82), where he taught until 1988. Living in Paris and Heidelberg since 1989, he has participated in numerous international exhibitions. Together with Gu Dexin and Huang Yongping, he was one of the Chinese artists participating in the exhibition ‘Magiciens de la terre’ at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1989). Other exhibitions include ‘Chine demain pour hier’ (France 1990), ‘Silent Energy’ (MoMA Oxford, 1993), ‘Shenzhen International Ink Biennial’ (1998, 2000, 2002), ‘Pause—Gwanju Biennial 2002’ (Korea) and ‘Zone of Urgency—Venice Biennial 2003’.

In Yang’s work—the One Hundred Layers of Ink (Qianceng mo) series or Eye of the Storm, (2000), for example—Chinese tradition and contemporary art form a stirring blend. One of his main concerns is to find ways of implanting Chinese traditional painting, aesthetics and thought into a contemporary context. Daoist thought, post-structuralist strategies and an iconoclast attitude, which Yang inherited from his time as a Red Guard, are important vehicles used by the artist to attempt such integration.

Further reading

Hou, Hanru (1999). ‘Malpositioning’. In Yang Jiechang—Dong Cunrui. Taipei: Cherngpiin Gallery.

Köppel-Yang, Martina (2002). ‘Zaofan Youli/Revolt is Reasonable: Remanifestations of the Cultural Revolution in Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s and 1990s’. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 1.2 (Summer/August): 66–75.

MARTINA KÖPPEL-YANG