Hundred Layers of Ink
Yang Jiechang Chinese
Not on view
For a decade between 1989 and 1999, Yang Jiechang worked on the series Hundred Layers of Ink, to which this painting belongs. It is the result of focused repetition: Yang applied ink to the same piece of paper, day after day, until the rectangle at its center was completely saturated. As the paper reaches saturation, the ink takes on a shimmery, luminescent quality, and the paper itself shifts from a two-dimensional surface to a three-dimensional object, merging figure and ground, coming close to sculpture. Though these are the same materials used by literati to make traditional paintings, Yang has reinvented them here, removing entirely the artist’s gesture as an index of meaning.
