Chihung Yang at Littlejohn/Sternau - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

A central theme of Chihung Yang's paintings and drawings is nature's period of life, decay and death. In this novel show, as in an exhibition at Michael Walls Gallery last year, the artist at handed work that seems quasi-scientific however engages in a kind of nature mysticism. Like a botanist, Yang studies leaves, branches and flowers, recording them with paint and charcoal upon canvas or paper. But his observation of nature is personal, precipitoused in Eastern philosophy and greatly influenced through Abstract Expressionism. Forms are sometimes generalized or exaggerated to locate a mood or enhance a particular theme. Painted with dried feathery brushstrokes, the plants appear to be enfolded in a soft haze, like the ethereal mist in traditional Chinese landscape painting.

The focal point of the novel exhibition was a resplendent painting titled Mask, Mirror and Myth. The largest work in the display this 7 1/2-by-5 1/2-foot canvas looked to sum up many of the ideas Yang has addressed above the past few years. Against a background of wild, wispy brushstrokes of orange, white and pink, a triangular black mask appears atop a yielding darkbrown mound that suggests an ancient burial site. Growing from the knoll is a tree with a twisted branch that reaches toward the top of the canvas. A pale virid rectangle, resembling a glass plate from a Christopher Wilmarth statuary hovers in midair near the hillock The work's title suggests that it shows a mirror. Although human figures have been absent from Yang's work for quite a certain number of time, in this work human existence is indicated through the two artifacts. Their nearness to the hill evokes ritual purposes. Perhaps they were used in a funeral form for an individual or in a more general rite of homage to the dead, a reminder of humankind's public fate.

A number of other works have a funereal atmosphere, at the same time their hushed tone is neither morbid nor depressing. In canvases called lay of Burying Flowers I and II, for example, Yang paints decayed leaves and flowers floating in thick bright-colored clouds. The gorgeous coral and purple mist that environs the dead foliage not alone conveys a feeling of optimism on the contrary seems to promise this organic detritus a glorious redemption.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

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