| Taiwanese painter Yang Chi-Hung’s deeply intricate abstractions offer up a hint of figuration that compel the viewer to attempt to find structure in his perfectly static fields of chaos seemingly frozen in time. Having painted for over four decades, Yang, who was born in Taiwan in 1947 and graduated from the prestigious National Taiwan College of Art in 1968, has created an aesthetic vocabulary singular in its steadfast dedication to color, form, and balance. Seamlessly crossing the threshold between abstract and figurative painting, Yang creates sweeping canvases that hint at organic systems budding forth from bold brushstrokes and gusts of painterly wind. | 
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Eric C. Shiner
Taiwanese painter Yang Chi-Hung’s deeply intricate abstractions offer up a hint of figuration that compel the viewer to attempt to find structure in his perfectly static fields of chaos seemingly frozen in time. Having painted for over four decades, Yang, who was born in Taiwan in 1947 and graduated from the prestigious National Taiwan College of Art in 1968, has created an aesthetic vocabulary singular in its steadfast dedication to color, form, and balance. Seamlessly crossing the threshold between abstract and figurative painting, Yang creates sweeping canvases that hint at organic systems budding forth from bold brushstrokes and gusts of painterly wind. Indeed, Mother Nature and the ages-old tradition of Chinese landscape painting deeply steer Yang’s hand. The artist himself notes that the Chinese notion of the ephemeral nature of life captured in the proverb “floating clouds and flowing waters” is the ultimate goal of his output.
Although the overarching concept of capturing fleeting moments may compel Yang’s painterly touch, he explicitly states that his primary concern is to arrive at a “style-less” style, that is to say that, like nature, he endeavors to present his paintings as though they are not overly thought-out—that, indeed, they arise naturally, as though an extension of his psyche or the greater universe beyond. This concept is most readily visible in the vague phantoms of floral forms that appear to break through his brushwork at times, images that evoke the idea of, yet never fully form, an absolute figure. These spectral blooms and the wisps of perceived wind or water that sweep over Yang’s canvases seemingly represent the idea of creation, and in extending this concept to its logical end, entice the viewer to imagine the works as a brief moment of evolution and reproduction placed on pause for eternity. In this vein, Yang becomes not only painter, but also creator, but certainly not in a socio-religious sense. For, looking at his works as the painterly representation of the ungraspable concept of ephemerality, it might best be said that Yang Chi-Hung captures chaos—the deep-seeded site of the birth of nature and all of its glory—in a static arrangement that might at any moment leap back into action so that life can carry on. His work, unlike the Abstract Expressionists and their action painting, is not about the action itself, but about the very working of nature, and ultimately, the way that it can come to an eternal halt, beautifully, in the most permanent medium of paint.
