Yang Jiechang

Yang Jiechang (; born 1956 in Foshan, Guangdong Province) is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin whose work combines traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy with contemporary art practices.

Life and education Yang Jiechang was born in 1956 in Foshan in Guangdong Province, PR China. He grew up during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and received an early training in traditional Chinese culture from his grandfather, who taught him calligraphy and the use of the Chinese brush. From 1973 to 1978, Yang apprenticed at the Foshan Folk Art Institute, studying calligraphy, ink painting, paper mounting, and meticulous colour painting. He studied Chinese painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts from 1978 to 1982, where he taught until 1988 and subsequently taught there until 1988. Yang Jiechang belongs to the first generation of artists educated after the Cultural Revolution - universities and art academies reopened in late 1977 - , and his early career developed alongside China's cultural opening in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1988, French curator Jean-Hubert Martin, at the time director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, invited him to take part in the exhibition "Magiciens de la terre", held in the Centre Pompidou in 1989. Yang has since lived and worked in Europe.

Work Yang Jiechang works in painting, calligraphy, installation, video, photography, and performance. He is best known for his use of traditional Chinese media—particularly ink painting, meticulous color painting, and calligraphy—recontextualised within contemporary art.

Yang achieved international recognition with Hundred Layers of Ink (1989–1999), a series of large-scale monochrome ink paintings first shown in Magiciens de la terre. Created by applying successive layers of pure and diluted ink onto Xuan paper, the works emphasize the material qualities of ink, water, and paper. The paintings feature abstract forms in which distinctions between figure and ground are minimised, and the series has been interpreted as emphasizing process and contemplation over representation. Influences and conceptual approach

Following his move to Europe, Yang engaged with Romanticism, particularly German Romanticism, alongside concepts drawn from Daoist philosophy. These influences inform works such as Hundred Layers of Ink (1989-1999), Scroll of Secret Merit (2004), and Double View – Crosses (2014), which explore material immediacy, spirituality, and self-transformation.

Since the early 2000s, Yang's work has increasingly focused on figurative painting. He frequently employs the meticulous colour technique on silk, using vegetal and mineral pigments. This technique is historically associated with the Lingnan School of painting of the early 20th century. Works from this period include Crying Landscape (2003), Tomorrow Cloudy Sky (2005), Stranger than Paradise (2009–2016), Tale of the Eleventh Day (2011–2022), and a series of self-portraits.

Calligraphy is a central component of Yang's practice. In addition to Chinese characters, he uses Western languages, often incorporating deliberate errors and irregularities. Works in this vein include Testament (1991), I Still Remember (1999–2019), Oh My God / Oh Diu (2002–2005), and Dark Writing (2019).

Oh My God / Oh Diu consists of a calligraphic diptych accompanied by video recordings of the artist writing and vocalizing the phrases "Oh my God" and the Cantonese expletive "Oh, diu." The work that was produced in response to the September 11 attacks, sImilar to many of his figurative works, reflect the artists engagement with current events.

Exhibitions

Yang has participated in numerous exhibitions, including: China Avant-Garde, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 1989 Les Magiciens de la terre, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989 Chine demain pour hier, Pourrières, France, 1990 Biennial of Emergency, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2005 Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK, 2006 Laboratoires pour un avenir incertain, La Force de l'Art - 1st Paris Triennial, Grand Palais, Paris, 2006 Capolavoro, Palazzo di Primavera, Terni, Rome, 2006 Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2007 Metamorphosis - The Generation of Transformation in Chinese Contemporary Art, Tampere Art Museum, Tampere, Finland, 2007 New Wave '85 UCCA, Beijing, PR China, 2007 Onda Anomala – Manifesta 7, Trento, Italy, 2008 Against Exclusion, Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Garage, Moscow, 2009 Lyon Biennial, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Lyon, France, 2009 Qui a peur des artistes ? Une sélection d’œuvres de la Fondation François Pinault, Musée de Dinard, France, 2009 Hareng Saur : Ensor et l'art contemporain, MSK and S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium, 2010 Le Jardin Emprunté, Jardin du Palais-Royal, Paris, 2010 The World Belongs to You, Palazzo Grassi, Fondation F. Pinault, Venice, 2011 Death Matters, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2011 Reactivation, Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, PR China, 2012 Sehnsucht, Gaasbeek Castle, Belgium, 2012 Clouds, Museum of Sketches for Public Art, Lund, Sweden, 2012 Zizhiqu/ Autonomous Regions, Times Museum Guangzhou, PR China, 2013 Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2013 China's Changing Landscape, Nordic Watercolour Museum, Sweden, 2014 La Chine ardente. Sculptures monumentales contemporaines, Mons - European Capital of Culture, Belgium, 2015 Harmony and Transition. Chinese Landscapes in Contemporary Art, MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany, 2015 Fragmentary Narratives, Stanford Art Gallery, Stanford, USA, 2016 Carambolages, Grand Palais, Paris, 2016 Art and China After 1989: Theatre of the World, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2017/2018. Carte Blanche à Yang Jiechang, Musée Guimet, Paris, 2022 Shifting Surfaces, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt, 2024 Yang Jiechang: Artists Continue to Try Hard, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, PRCh, 2025

Filmography 2013 - The Enduring Passion for Ink 2017 - The VelociPastor 2022 - Carte Blanche à Yang Jiechang

Collections Yang Jiechang's work is held in the following permanent collections: Brooklyn Museum, New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Musée Guimet, Paris Musée Cernuschi, Paris LACMA, Los Angeles Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou M+, Hong Kong