Engram-Along with the desert 20 December 2024 - 22 January 2025
Yang Yang
I recall the first time visiting the studio of Yang Yang in 2015, inside a shabby and muggy tenement house in an “urban village”. He took out a stack of imitation works on Gauguin, mentioning the life and career of Gauguin was somehow paralleling with his own experiences; and how the color aesthetics of Gauguin had influenced his art-making for a long time.
Coming alone from the grassland to living in Guangzhou, he always notices the statues of folk deities like Caishen or Guan Gong in the restaurants he dines in. He thinks they stand as unique “faith spaces”, like an asylum for his life in Guangzhou, offering a few comforts, or a moment of escape.
As life became hard-pressed, he started to work in restaurant. Living with other workers, the three of them slept on bunk beds squeezed in a tiny space less than a few square meters. Even though, day to day he was still painting and planning, trying all means to stick to the things he believes in. As he knew, if he gave up, there would be nothing else. He could only be working and working, as a restaurant waiter. He also looked for any ready-to-hand materials from the daily life, such as, the plastic boxes. With these ready-to-hand materials, he found a consolatory spiritual and faith space. The plastic boxes are just like shrines and grottoes. Thus he came out with ideas of infusing religious elements into statue-making. Recently, he has gradually turned his art subjects toward more and more natural themes, such as spiritual animals and plants.
The emergence of natural themes is due to his unableness to forget about the impact of his original home and environment. As early as we just met, he already said that he would be incapable of blending into this fast and consumeristic modernization process of Guangzhou. Though he still lives and makes art in Guangzhou, but in his artworks the vibe of the grassland still permeates.
He still lives in tent, no AC, no water heater. Blue are the clouds. Birds lead out of the clouds. Durable in heat, in cold, and in time.
-Aojie LIN