YANG Chongguang：DISSONANCE
Gallery 55 is honored to announce that Yang Chongguang’s solo exhibition "Dissonance" will open on the 10th of May, 2025. This solo exhibition will showcase Yang Chongguang’s recently completed collage and graffiti works on canvas. The exhibition is expected to end on the 8th of June. This is Yang Chongguang’s third solo exhibition at Gallery 55 following "Spring is a Liar" (2021) and “It’s a Cool Bull…” (2023).
Yang Chongguang likes to stay quietly in the dark, in a room with no strong light, almost pitch black. He says that in the dark he can have many rich associations. Before painting, he often indulges in meditation in the darkness. As for what exactly he will paint next, it doesn’t matter to him at all. Now when Yang Chongguang paints, his eyes have become irrelevant to him. Maybe it’s because his eyesight is so poor that everything he sees is blurry. Maybe it’s because he has long been accustomed to letting his feelings and concepts precede techniques. He is used to not relying much on his eyes to paint, because he doesn’t need to see clearly what specific things are on the canvas. He likes to use a kind of feeling, relying on a kind of latent hint and guidance, just like a blind person massaging and groping in the dark, searching...
In this series of acrylic graffiti on canvas on display, Yang Chongguang attempts to create an archive for himself: a face never discovered by the world, a text never read, a painting never drawn, a sky never seen, a virgin land never cultivated, a sound never heard, a color never witnessed, a new flavor never tasted, a landscape never seen, a scent never smelled, a brand-new language, a dream never had, a completely unfamiliar place…
The series of collage on canvas on display at the same time presents a fragmented and broken patchwork, and finds a balance within his inner self at this moment between the figurative and the abstract, as well as between simplicity and complexity. Just as these images and the apt selection of materials fulfill and fill in those unutterable thoughts lurking within Yang Chongguang’s inner self in recent times. Moreover, these paintings maintain a consistent thread with his long-standing painting style. For instance, on a 150-centimeter square canvas, the collage technique is employed to disrupt his habitual painting patterns, to criticize and challenge them, making him cherish the simple, direct and crude results on the canvas even more, no longer getting entangled in the technical aspects of painting. Despite the loss of potential inner candor due to habitual descriptions during the painting process, they remain expressionistic.
Yang Chongguang was born in Wuhu, Anhui Province in 1955. From 1990 to 1996, he studied at the Braunschweig University of Art in Germany and obtained a master’s degree. From 1997 to 2014, he served as the director of the Center for Modern Art at the University of Science and Technology of China and taught modern art history. Yang Chongguang has held numerous solo exhibitions both at home and abroad, and his works have been collected by European art museums and private collectors. He currently lives and works in Hefei, Anhui Province.