Chinese American Arts Council proudly presents Yang Yang at The Second Annual Asian Contemporary Art Fair New York from November 6 to November 10, 2008 at Manhattan’s Pier 92.

Artist Statement

Although classically trained, my artistic journey has taken a path I could not have imagined. What once satisfied me in expression has been replaced by an acute desire to look beyond the obvious. Investigate the mystery and magic that exists in everything that I consider real. The distortion of shapes in my paintings is the outcome of my subjective concept. As the result of my perception of nature, my figures close and open, giving a mystic atmosphere to my work while remaining at one with the impression that each work creates. In their distorted characters they are expressed. As Lao Tzu described it, “shapes can be expressed, but not in an ordinary way.”

I am beginning to think that I am a motion picture director. I start by creating my characters, and let them act freely and tell the story by themselves. The difference between a motion picture and my art is that my works require viewers to participate; every piece of my work is the beginning and ending. As an artist I am but providing a vehicle to the mystery land. This vehicle only runs in man’s spiritual geography. Somehow I feel that I should not take credit for the pleasure or responsibility for the pain that viewers find in my works.

Through a mutual penetration with my subject, I try to express my sense of the integrated wholeness of the experience. I must trust that my intuition will bring me close to the esoteric elements - the mystery and the magic at the heart of the complexity. I find beauty in scenes that convey a primitive innocence. My works are inspired by mythology and mysticism. I have but one simple goal; to take viewers to a place they have never been before, to a place where there is no reference.