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133
Yang Jiechang, 100 Layers of Ink, 1992-1994

Chapter: Seelenfenster - Gesture, Movement, Cipher

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Historical violence
For many artists and cultural figures, the Chinese Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 was an existential catastrophe with lasting traumatic effects. Contact with Western art was completely severed, and the purges of the bourgeois, capitalist-oriented class led to public trials, executions, and countless massacres, particularly in the cultural sphere.

A paradoxical cultural renaissance
Yang Jiechang, born in 1956, experienced a paradoxical cultural renaissance during the Cultural Revolution. As the leader of his Red Guard unit, he could decide which books were preserved, censored, burned, or sent to factories. He had the privilege of studying classical Chinese and began learning Chinese ink painting and calligraphy at the People’s Art Institute in Foshan.

Magician of the earth
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where he first encountered Western art through lectures and art magazines. In 1989, he was selected to participate in Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, a groundbreaking international contemporary art exhibition that highlighted global art scenes, though still from a largely Eurocentric perspective.

A return to traditional Chinese art
However, the works Yang had brought with him were all confiscated at the Shenzhen border. Suddenly confronted in Paris with a bewildering diversity of artists and practices, he decided to return to the fundamental materials and techniques of traditional Chinese art. Day after day, he applied layers of black Chinese ink and alum to large sheets of Xuan paper, a supple material traditionally used for Chinese calligraphy and painting.

Meditative process
He repeated this procedure on each sheet until it became saturated and acquired a three-dimensional quality, then stretched it onto the canvas. By combining traditional Chinese and European painting and mounting techniques and using alum—a salt that regulates the paper’s absorbency and facilitates the application of ink—Yang succeeded in covering the paper with a hundred layers of ink. Together, these materials create a black, textured surface that appears particularly glossy and luminous after so many applications.

Light from the darkness
The large monochromatic square paintings, reminiscent of American Color Field painting of the 1940s and 1950s, brought Yang international recognition. The series anticipated the performative use of ink, monotone repetition, and other strategies now common in contemporary Chinese art. The technique of multiple, repetitive ink applications also reflects Yang’s engagement with Zen Buddhism and Taoism. The process becomes a form of meditation. The resulting image has a deeply physical presence, resembling a geological formation whose layers form a landscape with a shimmering surface that brings light out of darkness.


Audio

Note: The audio transcription is voiced by an AI.

Yang Jiechang, 100 Layers of Ink, 1992-1994
Indian ink on paper
© Yang Jiechang
Sammlung Deutsche Bank

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