Yang Jiechang

signed YANG JIECHANG and JIECHANG, and dated 2005

Gift from the artist
Sotheby's, New York, 17 March 2008, lot 65

United Kingdom, London, Saatchi Gallery, Ink: The Art of China, 19 June - 5 July, 2012, p. 156

Kuo, Jason C., Chinese Ink Painting Now, Distributed Art Publishers, New York, USA; Timezone 8, Hong Kong, China, 2010, pp.170-171

Overall in very good condition. Framed size: 148 x 226 cm; 58 1/4 x 89 in.
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Born in Foshan, Yang Jiechang began studying ink painting at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1969. In 1982, he graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Art, where he taught Chinese painting until 1988. During the 1980s, Yang studied Daoism and Zen Buddhism, which greatly influenced his artistic conviction that creating art must align with one's inner beliefs. Invited to Paris by the Centre Pompidou in 1989 for his first exhibition abroad, Yang created his 100 Layers of Ink series, which brought him international recognition as a leading conceptual artist. The meditative series was made from daily applications of ink on paper—a performance that documented the artist's history from 1989 to 1999. For over the past decade, Yang's works have evolved and are influenced by the philosophy of German Romanticism; choosing problematic subject matter, he creates expressions of chaos that illustrate current affairs of cross over identities and of the boundaries of the nation state. His Tomorrow Cloudy Sky series (LOTS 540, 545, and 554) originates from an exhibition in Iran and refers to the stormy ongoing discussion about the dangers of nuclear power. Yang's works are in art museums and major collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fukuoka Art Museum, Rockefeller Foundation, and Ullens Foundation.