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Yang Jiechang 楊詰蒼
Hundred Layers of Ink—Chine demain pour hier 千層墨──獻給昨天的中國明天
1990
In 1989, Yang Jiechang arrived in Paris to participate in Magiciens de la terre, a landmark global art exhibition organised by the Pompidou Centre. However, his works had been detained at the Shenzhen border, leaving him with only a few brushes. Suddenly exposed to the bewildering range of artists and practices from around the world at the Pompidou, Yang decided to retreat into the fundamental materials and procedures of traditional Chinese art. Day after day for over a month, he layered ink and alum onto large sheets of Xuan paper, which is commonly used for Chinese painting and calligraphy. The layers gradually built up into a thick crust with a shimmering surface, creating light out of blackness. This was the beginning of Yang’s Hundred Layers of Ink series.
This monumental early work from the series was originally presented in 1990 in the ruins of a Catholic church in Pourrières, France. Yang mixed ground medicinal herbs and earth from the cemetery outside into the ink. The interplay between ink, brush, alum, paper, and these insoluble particles creates rich variations between smooth and rough textures as well as warm and cool tones. While the work appears as an abstract painting, to the artist each layer of ink is a concrete record of personal experience and memory, containing dimensions of both space and time.
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