Yang Jie Chang: Paintings on Rice Paper

Yang Jie-Chang was born in 1956 at Foshan, in the Provence of Canton. He studied at the Institute of Popular Art in Foshan, and later in Peking.In 1982 he was appointed teacher at the Academy of Arts, Canton. His training was principally in traditional Chinese painting, and the ancient technique of collage on paper.

Yang Jie Chang grew up on the large estate of a wealthy land-owner – later confiscated by the Chinese communist party. He remembers vividly when Mao Tse Toung proclaimed the Great Cultural Revolution, in 1966:

'In the ancient town (of Foshan), suddenly everything became red – everywhere red: red stars, red flags, red walls, red the bible of Mao, red thoughts, red brigades..'

In 1970, as an adolescent, Yang Jie-Chang became a member of the Red Brigade – and quickly realised both its limits and its terrible excesses. As a consequence, and a means of escape, he decided to become an artist. In 1982 he was introduced to Taoist teachings. From this time, he says 'I entered into a black and grey world'.

The passage from ‘red’ to ‘black’ mentioned by the artist, evidently corresponds to a radical change in his way of thinking. Taoism gave him a mental and spiritual language in which to construct his work. He chose to renounce all colour, all representation, all allusion, all symbolism. Painting only in Chinese ink, and layered in places with collaged rice paper, the pictures themselves seem black across the entire surface. However, they are not uniformally so – the collaged, textured sections pick up and reflect light, while the flatter, dark edges absorb it. The simplicity of the form is rich, allowing both darkness and light to come together on a single surface.

In many ways, Yang Jie-Chang’s work is sited in western, contemporary art. As in conceptual art and minimalism, the aspiration is both abstract and significant – to strip away all but the most vital, and distil meaning in one colour or stroke. The paintings appear both decorative and complex because the inevitable connotations of blackness – mourning, death, the tomb – are countered by refracted light, suggesting resurrection and renewal.

Most important, says Yang Jie-Chang, is that 'the process of the work and its results are a kind of meditation, a kind of self-accomplishing. What they reflect and express for the recipient also belongs to the realm of meditation.'