In Yang Jiechang’s works – whether a painting, an ink drawing, a sculpture, a collage or a filmed performance – traditional Chinese aesthetics and thinking unite powerfully to contemporary creativity. Trained in calligraphy at the People’s Art Institute in Foshan, and in traditional Chinese painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Canton, Yang Jiechang has also made a long and detailed study of Zen Buddhism and Taoism. In 1989 he took part in the acclaimed exhibition “Les Magiciens de la terre” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and moved definitively to Europe. Until the early years of the new millennium he devoted himself to an introspective oeuvre drawing on Chinese artistic tradition and contemporary cultural change. This was followed by a period of creation in which Yang Jiechang has questioned both social and political events of today’s societies and his own life as an artist working between Europe and Asia.

Stranger than Paradise continues this exploration and interrogation of our globalised world. The different works on show – two of them especially created for the exhibition – call into question the concepts of control and instability that govern our systems of collective living. Each piece, moreover, draws on traditional Chinese culture and aesthetics in its use of a specific medium – ceramics, painting on silk – or a distinctive object in the form of a bronze gong, as in the video “Gong”. On show in the main exhibition space, the installation Stranger than Paradise, Mountain Top 2 (2011) comprises 200 ceramic sculptures on stands of different heights which show animals having sexual intercourse. Each pair involves different species – elephant and tiger, stork and puma, wolf and monkey – in a defying of physical singularities and incongruities. This sculptural landscape is associated with the video projection “Gong” (2011), showing the artist striking a bronze gong with his head. Each impact produces a sound that spreads through the exhibition space, at the same time as its sets the image quivering. Pursued by these visual and sound vibrations, the visitor becomes the target of the blows to the gong. A second video “Duk” (2011) show the artist with a bird mask hitting the objective of the camera. With each hit and consequent sound the image blurrs and gradually turns black. In another room a large scenery entitled Tale of the 11th Day (千里江山奇妙2011) again shows animals of different species and humans engaging in intercourse in a paradise-like setting – metaphors of the differences, mutations, confusions and identities symptomatic of today’s world.

(modified Press text La Criée, Rennes, France, May 2011)

PARADISE ACCORDING TO YANG JIECHANG   

Entitled Stranger than Paradise, the latest series of works to be shown at the gallery, furthers the artist exploration and questioning of our global world, calling into question the notions of control and instability that rule our collective systems of life. Basing his thinking on the idea that, in a media-dominated world where life has become unreal and fictional,authenticity has become a rare commodity, Yang Jiechang imagines “a landscape for a return to Nature” that he locates in Paradise. By calling the exhibition «Tale of the 11th Day», Yang Jiechang deliberately extends the 10th day of Boccaccio’s Decameron with his paradise landscape. In the medieval tales, ten characters have fled the plague, taking refuge in the countryside where everything seems idyllic, an earthly Eden out of time and reality. For the amusement of all, each person must relate one tale every night. Nature is omnipresent in the narratives, viewed as a protective universe where everyone can find peace of mind, a universe that contrasts strongly with the plague-ridden atmosphere of the city. On this 11th day, Yang Jiechang paints a paradise for us, where all divides, whether religious, ethnic, ideological or political, have disappeared, and with them the conflicts and wars that tear societies apart. “The choice to represent animals with their mutual feelings, inclinations and loves, was made in order to eliminate any ideological approach or form of –ism. It’s a very strange scene. In real life, this type of situation seems improbable, even impossible. That’s why I placed it in Paradise” Yang Jiechang tells us. Here, people and animals frolic quite freely, reminding us that on the one hand humans may well be animals that have evolved, but that today they have become unnatural. Myths and legends, ancient narratives, the history of art, religion and customs and popular beliefs all relate stories of animals that have been a part of human history, accompanying our development.

Finding Nature within the Stranger than Paradise series seems to force us not to remain just at the appearances level, or in simple formal terms, the mating of men and beasts.The paintings’ provocative character perhaps fosters an awareness that our profound nature, our true humanity lies in our animality (not bestiality): an animality of the heart that beats to the unity of Creation in all its forms. If we wish to understand our nature as humankind, maybe we should accept our animal nature, love it and be one with it so that we are no longer unnatural but one with Creation in all its forms. Perhaps finding Nature within ourselves will once more open the gates of instinct and reveal portals leading to a future … a future that is human at last.

The works that compose the Stranger than paradise series convoke traditional Chinese aesthetics and culture but using diverse techniques that are adapted for contemporary purposes: paintings on silk, some of which are designed as screens, forcing the viewers to observe from the outside as if reminding them that they are not part of the landscape they see. The installation with traditionally made ceramics encourages viewers to walk through the same paradise landscape for which the artist has provided a third dimension. It should be noted that one of the masterpieces from this series is a painting over 10 metres long (which took Yang Jiechang over a year to complete) and has been presented at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice since early June in the exhibition curated by Caroline Bourgeois entitled «Le Monde vous appartient (The World Belongs to You)».

Further, our gallery recently coproduced the three dimentional installation of the same series which was exhibited in the Art Center in Rennes La Criée last May, made up of 200 sculptures set on plinths of differing heights, representing animals in mating positions. Each couple represents two different species facing their physical incongruities (an elephant and a tiger, a wolf and a monkey, a stork and a puma …), while providing visitors with the possibility of living the landscape and the various elements within the painting. A video accompanies this sculpture landscape: called Gong, it shows the artist striking a bronze gong with his head, suggesting another landscape that unfolds within his head.