PAST TELEVISION SERIES (CHINESENESS) BROADCAST
Discovery Channel Asia
December 2013

The rise of the Chinese economy, culture, and politics has made China a dominant power in the 21st century. Pursuant to this trend, Chinese contemporary art has taken a step abroad and won the attention of the international art community. The expansion of the market was made evident by Sotheby’s first Chinese contemporary art sale in New York in the spring of 2006, when it underscored the sustained value of Chinese art among global bidders. Chineseness will be the first program on Discovery Channel that will focus on Chinese contemporary artists after World War II. It will introduce four internationally recognized artists: Xu Bing and Zhang Huang from China, Li Chen and Yang Chihung from Taiwan. Accompanied with the aforementioned artists, the Discovery crew has filmed in locations across the world including Taiwan, China, New York, Paris, and more. The show will take the audience through a journey of their lives in creating their vision of artin order to comprehend the substantial “soft power” of Chinese contemporary art in today’s world. Chineseness will premiere in Taiwan in December, 2013.

Yang Chihung, who was born in Taiwan and now lives in the United States, is one of the most important contemporary Chinese abstract expressionists. He was awarded the Asian Artist Award by the Governor of New York. For over 40 years, the artist has created relentlessly. He successfully incorporates eastern vibrant brush strokes with western grandiose landscapes. He remains an active figure in the international art scene as well as an inspirational mentor to distinguished contemporary artists today. Through Discovery Channel’s Chineseness, the audience will get to explore the life journey of these important artists and to comprehend their well-cultivated minds behind the scenes. The program aims to represent the mechanism behind Chinese art’s growing influence in a global context.

PAST GROUP EXHIBITION
La Biennale Di Venezia, Venice, Italy
June 1 - November 24, 2013

PAST SOLO EXHIBITION
Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan
November 3, 2012 - December 9, 2012

Asia Art Center has now reached our 30th anniversary, making us one of the most well established art galleries in Taiwan, featuring our Taipei based Jianguo South Rd. Gallery, and since 2007, our Beijing 798 Art District flagship gallery, as well as our 2010 entry into Singapore. By the end of this year we expect to have completed our second Taipei gallery at Dazhi, and our premiere exhibit will feature Taiwan’s leading Abstract Expressionism Chihung Yang with a solo Exhibition entitled “Mindscape”, which will feature the master’s new works for 2012. Chihung Yang is one of the leading middle aged artists in Taiwan and the world art market is watching this artist with expectation. In the 1980s international art forums were replete with the artist’s work, and innovative pieces have continued to come forth, making this artist among the most important Chinese Abstract Expressionists after Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun. Chihung Yang’s works not only express a visually captivating imagery, but also portray deeply evocative emotional landscapes, with an attitude toward experiencing life and exploring the world from the outwardly toward the inward, and as the artist has matured, reaching the sixties, the artistic mastery has become much freer in exploration of virtual, imaginary space, recalling the emotive landscape of youthful innocence, through purely unfettered painting accompanied by the artist’s personal style. So, this exhibition has been themed “Mindscape” to evoke the artist’s emotional spirit in complete and discrete imagery.

Chihung Yang has remarked: “all that my works express are my sense towards time and life during their varying periods and under the pressure of immediacy, as intimately personal works, but which express a sense and experience of the entirety of life.” “As one matures, the accelerated pace of time becomes greater, and the sense that time is fleeing, so this is an experience of life’s spiritual bounds and emotional boundaries, in the uncertain quest of the as yet unattainable sense of perfection.” These recent works reflect a spirit of transformative innovation, which while remaining focused on their invariant core, yet manage to evoke the brush through layer upon layered textures, of an essential maturity, revealing the visual potential for depth as a tool for broadening one’s vision, so that the visual depth, is also the expression of the power of space, and of spirit in action, as the interaction with the piece from all sides brings an accelerated sense of challenge, but after the intersecting path is chosen, there is an eternal unlimited restoration which floats mystically about the work, revealing the essential living bounds in visual expression, to challenge the viewer with a new spiritual perspective, while also informing an opportunity for a new interpretation of life.

This exhibition will begin November 3, 2012, and the artist Chihung Yang will be in attendance for the opening, ready to share this artistic world with you in an adventure of the heart searching for a blissful peace.

PAST SOLO EXHIBITION
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
October 29, 2011 - January 8, 2012

PAST SOLO EXHIBITION
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
November 13, 2010 - January 2, 2011

PAST SOLO EXHIBITION
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Tentatively scheduled for June 2011

PAST SOLO EXHIBITION
On View from April 3, 2008 / Opening Reception on April 3, 2008, 6:00-8:00 pm.



ChinaSquare is pleased to present CHIHUNG YANG: Recent Paintings, curated by Eric C. Shiner. Chihung Yang's new abstract paintings will be on view April 3rd through 26th with an opening reception on Thursday, April 3rd, from 6 to 8 pm.

Chihung Yang's deeply complex abstractions and sweeping brushwork transports the viewer into a universe ruled by the Chinese tradition of the ephemeral "floating clouds and flowing waters." In standing before Yang's work, it seems as if the universe has come to a standstill, that his clouds and rivulets of paint have been frozen in time. Yet, his balanced compositions hint at the grandeur of nature, or perhaps chaos unleashed and then reigned in. Mixing subtle monochromatic hues with bright bursts of paint, the fleeting appearance of color results in a feeling of life breaking through soil, or rays peeking through clouds. Organic structures emerge from the otherwise abstract nature of Yang's painting in the form of buds, roots and veins. As abstract painting, Yang's oeuvre stands its own in comparison with the great names of the tradition, whether Western or Chinese.

Chihung Yang, a graduate of the National Taiwan College of Art in Taipei, has been extensively exhibited throughout the world. Yang was awarded a year's residency at The Clocktower in New York City by The Institute for Art and Urban Resources in 1985 and has since been living and working in New York City. Yang's work is included in significant museum, corporate, and private art collections in Western Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Eric C. Shiner is an independent curator and art historian specializing in Japanese contemporary art. An assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennial in 2001, Shiner is an active writer and translator, a contributing editor for Art Asia Pacific magazine, and adjunct professor of Asian art history at Pace University in New York City.

ChinaSquare | Chelsea Arts Tower
545 W. 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
April 3, 2008 - April 26, 2008
Learn more>