Jie Chang Yang
China, 1956
1978-1982 Studied traditional Chinese painting at the Fine Arts Academy of Guangzhou
1982-1989 Taught at the Fine Arts Academy of Guangzhou
1984-1986 Studied Tao with Master Huangtao at Mount Luofu, Guangzhou and studied Zen Buddhism at Guangxiao Temple, Guangzhou
1989 Moved to Europe to live and work in Paris, France and Heidelberg, Germany
1992-1993 Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York
2003 - Residence at the Kunst Werke in Berlin, sponsored by French AFAA and German government.
2005 Visiting artist at Stanford University (February)
Art as a Dimension in Space and Time
Yang Jie-Chang and his Objets d'Art
by Daniel Lorz
He uses Chinese inks, paper gauze- and hair, needles or animal skins. Sometimes he alienates buildings - such as the lifeguard tower in Hong Kong's "Victoria Swimming Pool" in the year 1997, just as the former British crown colony became part of the People's Republic of China.
Yang Jie-Chang named the remodeled structure "Life-Tower, Watch-Tower, Living-Tower" - clearly stating that the city of Hong Kong has always had very different meanings for different people: be it a "life-saving" enclave for refugees from mainland China, a "watch tower" of Western aspirations, or be it a narrowly defined living district. Born in 1956 in the South Chinese province Guangdong, Yang Jie-Chang often conceives his works of art as an object showing a connection to the environment in which each was created. One of these in situ works is his installation of animal skins, needles, human hair and drops of blood in Lodz, Poland - and such works demonstrate how Yang always slips something historical into his creation of spaces.
Yang Jie-Chang is a Chinese artist who lives in Paris - as part of a Chinese artist's colony that has flourished in the French capital for several years now. Borderline experiences are everyday occurrences for these artists - and so it is no wonder that an artist like Yang Jie-Chang sees himself primarily as a concept artist, who wants to communicate the incommunicable to viewers of his art: violence as both a historical and a personal experience. From time to time, in plumbing the depths of this experience, he even uses traditional Chinese materials that is, paper and ink. But Yang, a former student of classical Chinese calligraphy, thwarts tradition, so to speak: he applies hundreds of layers of ink to the paper, covers ink layers with yet more ink layers, until the black paint makes a spatial impression on the viewer. "Never linger at the surface of things and materials!" might well be the axiom guiding his work.
And how does Yang Jie-Chang himself see his art? When I asked him, he laughed and recounted a story from China days, when he delved intensely into Taoist philosophy and even lived with a Taoist hermit for a while: "One day, a famous Qi Gong master made the trip from Peking to visit my master. I was very excited: when two important masters meet, something fundamental is bound to happen - or so I though. And then the master from Peking came to my master in the mountains and they drank tea and talked not at all about ideologies, nor about Taoism. They merely drank their tea, took a little walk on the mountain, and then the master from Peking left. Nothing at all had happened, and I was disappointed. Only long afterwards did I understand: in reality, that which had not happened was a major event!" Being an artist, explains Yang, has nothing to do with the question of whether you use ink or hair to paint - that is only the surface of things. The real crux of the matter is the idea pursued by the artist… So essentially, Yang Jie-Chang is in accord with this century's great European tradition of avant-garde art, which once had its beginnings in the city that Yang now calls home. It just goes to show that the distance from Paris to Beijing or South China can be bridged with just a few steps in space and time...
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Person TypeIndividual
United States of America (USA), 1937 - 2015
