YEH SHIH-CHIANG IN INK: CONSTRUCTING ETERNITY

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YEH SHIH-CHIANG IN INK: CONSTRUCTING ETERNITY

14 September - 19 October 2024

Hanart TZ Gallery

YEH SHIH-CHIANG IN INK: CONSTRUCTING ETERNITY

Opening and Mid-Autumn Reception: 14 September, Saturday, 2-6pm
Exhibition runs till 19 October, 2024

Hanart TZ Gallery
2/F Mai On Industrial Building
17-21 Kung Yip Street, Kwai Chung, Hong Kong
T: +852 2526 9019
E: hanart@hanart.com

Hanart TZ Gallery is honoured this September to present ‘Constructing Eternity’, an exhibition of ink paintings by late Taiwanese master artist Yeh Shih-Chiang (1926-2012).

Yeh Shih-Chiang was born in 1926 in Guangdong Province, China, and died in Taipei in 2012. He was among the last class of students at the Guangzhou Municipal Junior Art College under the directorship of the illustrious ink painter Gao Jianfu. In 1949, Yeh and a few classmates planned an art expedition to the famous Dunhuang Grottoes, but they were frustrated in the effort due to China’s civil war, which prompted them to redirect their journey to Taiwan instead; but here Yeh was caught up with the retreat of the National Republic government, and spent the rest of his life in Taiwan.

The experiences of his later youth, when he moved to Taiwan and was separated from his homeland, reflect the displacement, separation and mass migrations of the era. In Taiwan, he lived the life of a recluse in the countryside, and taught only part time at the Fu-Hsin Trade and Art School and the Art Society of National Taiwan University. His teaching style and mentoring, exemplified by his words and deeds are remembered fondly by generations of students. Over the years, he also became celebrated as a maker of ‘guqin’ (Chinese zither). In contrast to his fame as a maker of this music instrument, he was reluctant to exhibit his paintings and calligraphy, his true métier, although in time the legend of his art grew even with the limited works seen by Taiwan’s art circle. Living in extreme simplicity and isolation, Yeh sought to maintain the purity of his artistic pursuit by rejecting the institutional constraints of the art world, even as his lifelong vision was to find his place in art history. In Yeh’s final years, he rejected the offer of a major exhibition by the National Museum of History due to disagreement with standard curatorial practice.

YEH Shih-Chiang 葉世強 (1926-2012)
Rooster Crowing《啼雞》
1995 Ink and Colour on Paper 彩墨紙本 135 x 69.5 cm

YEH Shih-Chiang 葉世強 (1926-2012)
Book [Detail]《書》[局部]
1995 Ink on Paper 水墨紙本 136 x 70 cm

Dear Father,

I wrote you a letter from school, saying that I wanted to quit school, that I wanted to ascend to the sky and grasp the moon and the sun. I wanted to see the mountains and waters, the Heavens and the Earth. Not two days later, you came to school to take me to lunch. You raised a glass to toast me and wished me well on my journey. Father, I’m not alone, nor am I lonely, because, my Father, you are always with me.

November 1, 1988, from your son, Shih-Chiang

When Yeh Shih-Chiang wrote this letter to his father in 1988, it had already been forty years since he left his hometown of Shaoguan, and twenty years since his father’s death during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Heaven and Earth, Father and Mother, Moon and Stars. Nature resides within the self, and it is through the self that one engages with the universe. Is this not the meaning of solitude? It was from within his solitude that Yeh Shih-Chiang found a space to create his calligraphy and painting: works powerful and expansive enough to encompass mountains and seas—there was no place for art museums in Yeh Shih-Chiang’s artistic practice. He loved creating monumental works in oils in which the surging and overflowing paint could not be constrained within the frame. These are works that are best displayed outdoors, at the edge of the mountains, by the sea. And, indeed, Yeh Shih-Chiang would often spread out his paper on the public roadway by the seaside and write long, overflowing Buddhist scriptures in large characters: these should be chanted under starry skies, in solitude with the wind and waves.

At first glance, Yeh Shih-Chiang’s artistic career seems to have been sealed by ill fate. The tides of history set him adrift far from home and, during his early years in Taiwan, he became alienated from the arts scene, suffered deep disappointment in a love affair, and was socially isolated. Yet a more careful look at his life and his artistic sensibility reveals a man of refinement, full of vitality and contentment with his life and with himself. In his later years, he often recalled memories of his youth, and wrote sincerely and frankly about his nostalgic longing for the sights and sounds of his hometown, and about his deep affection for his parents. Yeh Shih-Chiang was not at all the rebel-artist type. Even during the years of revolution and the War of Resistance against Japan (the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945), he suffered neither from bitter class hostility nor the petty bourgeoisie’s sense of loss during a time of radical social change. It is difficult to position an artist like Yeh Shih-Chiang in the modern art discourse. A role more suitable for him is a figure from pre-modern China: that of the literati recluse. Engagement with the sociopolitical reality is the duty of every Confucian literatus, and, when times are not propitious, an honourable retreat is the way of the literati recluse.

Every aspect of Yeh Shih-Chiang’s daily activities were informed by a conscious awareness of the necessity for inner cultivation shared by both the Confucian literati and Zen traditions. For twenty years, after completing his art training at the Taiwan Provincial Teachers’ College, he not only threw himself passionately into painting and calligraphy, he also learned to craft traditional guqin (Chinese zither) instruments, studying with a master of guqin, Sun Yuqin, and, for many years, Yeh Shih-Chiang practiced this as his main art form. He also deepened his practice of Zen meditation through studies with Master Nan Huai-Chin. Inspired by his spiritual practice and a simple yet uncompromising way of life, he entered into a new creative period, creating a range of works marked by a pure fluidity of line and a dynamic inner power. Passionate and focused, Yeh Shih-Chiang would complete a painting in a single session, sometimes within minutes. In 1978, Master Yeh moved to a rural suburb on the outskirts of Taipei. For a number of years, he biked into the city to teach three days a week. His students recall his method of training as rigorous, even harsh, and, under his discipline, they would practice a single stroke of calligraphy for six hours straight, without even a bathroom break. This is reflective of the demands Yeh Shih- Chiang placed on his own self-cultivation.

Yeh Shih-Chiang was poor but lacked nothing. Living modestly, he had the supreme luxury of focusing his energies as he chose, without extraneous distractions. In the 1960s, Master Yeh’s contemporaries in the Western art world were experimenting with various forms of abstract painting, using gestural brushwork and mesmerising colour fields. He was sure to have taken notice of these developments in the West as the US News Agency in Taiwan was very active in promoting modern art during these Cold War years. Although Yeh Shih- Chiang did not follow the way of pure abstraction, his parallel path that rejected the mundane world was even more uncompromising. He further rejected the institutional system of art, rejected any compromise between art and society, and rejected all profit or gain from art. Yeh Shih-Chiang sought to elevate art into his own uncorrupted faith.

Excerpt from “Constructing Eternity”, Chang Tsong-Zung, 2021

YEH Shih-Chiang 葉世強 (1926-2012)
Willow Boat [Detail]《柳⾈》[局部]
2005 Ink on Paper 水墨紙本 136 x 70 cm