Chihung Yang (American/Taiwanese, born 1947), 楊識宏Certainty
2012

signed and dated on the reverse
acrylic on canvas

171 x 221 cm (67 5/16 x 87 in)注脚Provenance
Private Collection, Asia

楊識宏
胸有成竹
壓克力畫布
2012年作

簽名: CHIHUNG YANG 2012

來源
亞洲私人收藏

Taiwanese-American abstract painter Yang Chihung was born in 1947, part of a generation of Chinese artists whose artistic sensibilities were shaped by the dominance of ink art. He has been based in New York since 1979. His style of abstract expressionism developed in the 1950s with exposure to the works of Jackson Pollock. In the post-war era, artists like Pollock chose to focus on their inner experiences and abstract expressionism summed up the range of expressions that artists worked in. By the 1990s when his explorations in abstraction reached a higher level of intensity, he still stayed fateful to the spirit of artists working in the post-war era.

In the present lot, Yang Chihung has created a typical work informed by art history, and simultaneously governed by the Chinese tradition of the ephemera - floating clouds and flowing waters. The breathtaking superiority of his application of paint vividly portrays the grandeur of nature, and the energy of dynamic forces of nature. Yang starts with a monochromatic palette, which is overlaid with bright explosions of colour that accentuate a sense of movement. The overall effect conveys an effortless unity of visual and conceptual elements. It is the outcome of a painter's practice rooted in art history and the study of Chinese philosophy. In his essay, the art critic Donald Kuspit surmises,

Yang Chihung infuses Western abstraction with the Chinese landscape ideal of meditation on natural plenitude. But he gives us fragments and souvenirs of landscape, as it were. He meditates on the contraction of nature, its plenitude apparently gone forever, except in the limited, transient form of a flower ... Yang's handling involves a contradictory mix: as a content, nature is tenderly represented; as a form, it is approached abstractly, with a deliberate tough mindedness.

美籍台裔抽象畫家楊識宏生於一九四七年，在創作感知上屬於深受水墨藝術影響的那一代華人藝術家。楊識宏於一九七九年起定居紐約。他在一九五〇年代接觸到傑克遜・波拉克作品，從而展開抽象表現語彙的探索。戰後藝術家如波拉克多半著重於表達內心情感經驗，抽象表現主義成為當時藝術家致力於追尋的一派藝術。進入一九九〇年代，楊識宏在抽象繪畫上的實踐逐漸攀上高峰，至今仍以戰後藝術家的精神鑽研抽象繪畫持續不墜。

此拍品顯現出楊識宏對藝術史的透徹了解，以及對於中國傳統文化中行雲與流水稍縱即逝的體會。他以卓越的繪畫功力鮮活地捕捉到自然的宏偉以及動態張力。他先在畫面上施以單色顏料，再堆疊出鮮豔的色彩，強調流暢的動感。整體傳遞出輕鬆不費力的視覺效果與概念元素。此作品出自藝術家根植於藝術史的創作實踐以及對中國哲學的深入研究。美國藝術評論家唐納德． 庫斯比在文章裡敘述：

「他將西方的抽象納入中國山水畫對自然的冥想。但他給我們的可以說是景觀的片段和紀念品。他冥想自然收放，其豐富顯然一去不復返了，除了花，以有限、短暫的形式留存。

這正符合這樣的心情，楊識宏的處理運用矛盾的組合：作為一種內容，自然溫柔地呈現出來；作為一種形式，自然是抽象方法，有著刻意的強硬態度。」