I.

In May 2002, at his studio in Shenkeng, Taipei, I saw hundreds of portraits of Yang Hui's “Zhejiang Folk.” To speak of his realism-inclining works in recent years, there's no escaping his preceding abstract ones. Likewise to understand the man, there's no escaping this painter's progress of gigantic frames, hefty paints and turbulent brushes.

Mr. Yang embarked on abstract painting in the eighties. During the first ten years or so, his art had engaged closely with the society. Looking back, modernist art movement in 1985 and 1986 was a step forward in China's modernization, where the artists rebelled in canvas, as well as in exhibition halls. Their rebellion, a gesture of enlightened social awareness, has nothing to do with the so-called international art scene. Mr. Yang with all his earnestness cared about then society's development and the fate of the people around him. He struggled along and with, fighting the stereotypical thinking and dogmatic mode of expression instilled by the stifling education system. In a social milieu harsh and constraining, he marched on, fearlessly.

Despite the pedigree of the most prestigious academy of arts in China, Mr. Yang has his roots in a fringe Shanghai, where the city meets the country. This grass-root upbringing informs and influences his art and his approach to it. Abstraction was his armor, assumed to oppose the hypocritical realism fostered by the stifling ideology of the past decades. His untamed-ness constituted a fight pose, sharp and targeted. His woodcut prints and oil painting provided a platform for his desperation and conflicts to act physical: a combat of spiritual struggle was transposed onto frames, with the help of the body's exertion and movement. Consequently in his works thunders gathered and collided, hero's billowing silhouette overshadowing. During the eighties Yang Hui, also known to his friends as “Ba Hai,” was a premature young man in the underground cultural circles in Beijing and Shanghai. His personality and ferocity earned him respect from his peers.

The character of Ba Hai is loaded with too much literary charisma. Allow me to return to where we left. Yang Hui is an earnest person. He's been living in France and Taiwan for many years and still his brain is a product of the Chinese education system during the seventies and eighties. He is an idealist, cares about the current affairs and seeks the ultimate truth. His grass root-ness prevents any involvement of his with the establishment, political or occidental. After mid nineties, Chinese contemporary art saw a fervent rising; the art scene, a qualitative change; the society, a new trend toward philistine materialism; the younger generation, a sly cleverness. By then, the art of Yang Hui became confusing in meaning and, with no opposition in sight, lost its poignancy. Or, his abstract painting has advanced in dimensions and the emphasis has been placed more at the material and the aesthetics. Zen or Tao? A bit of both. Not far on this path can he go, I suspect, unless he gives up on art altogether. This guy with a heart full of social concerns has lost his enemies, like a solder without a war. Though we are not at a time of peace.

II.

“Zhejian Folk” series of portraits is an endeavor of Yang Hui's to search for meaning anew. First and foremost Mr. Yang cares for the ordinary people. Being rebellious, he is a man with mission. By this sense of mission we call his art a combat, one that wages spiritual attacks at the cultural hegemony. We can find in Mr Yang's early works traces of existentialism and other western philosophical thoughts, which in the eighties were commonly employed by Chinese intellectuals as intellectual weaponry. We also notice that Chinese traditional culture has figured more prominently in his later paintings. Mr. Yang may have his motives, but the result of his actions is have his art confined in aesthetic inquiry. The immense gravity of Chinese traditional thoughts shall be discussed separately and elsewhere. In Mr. Yang's later abstract works heroism spirals down into an empty ivory tower. We can see the loneliness of targeting a spear at an imaginary windmill. “Zhejian Folk” series is a dialectic progress in Mr. Yang's art. His abstract painting has become an aesthetic language too close circuited to connect with his concerns, to shore up his spiritual solitude, to build him a new social stance. He has no choice but walk out on the learned sophistication, the abstract aesthetics, and return to the people, his folk. The hundreds of faces in the series are wearied by time and have lost for words. However we see in these overly agitated brushworks a heart as passionate as the one found in the thrusts and attacks of the past. Again this has nothing to do with cultural fads or establishments. This is where Yang Hui's conscience lies.

Also, expatriate life exacerbates one's sense of identity. “Ba Hai” thus changed his name to “Ba Hai,” meaning “eight seas.” Living in many and different places affords one with more than one locality to settle in. Many and different cultural constraints collide and contradict in turning themselves irrelevant and specious. Individuals with no fixed identity are tremendously liberated. And liberation renders one landless. Perhaps we can say at this point of time and in this war without enemies that what really confuses Yang Hui is not the societal changes or the disappearance of enemies, but a loss of home. By temperament, Mr Yang feels deeply troubled. He came back from overseas and started to visit and photograph his home province Zhejiang. Based on these travels he produced hundreds of portraits shown in the “Zhejiang Folk” series. In my opinion, he thereby reconnects with the society and discovers a new point of entry. For Mr. Yang, revisiting and resolving the issue of “who I am” puts him back to reality. Principles regained, stances retaken.

Why does Yang Hui tirelessly, massively, repetitively draw the faces of those mid- and old-aged Zhejiang folks? Why does he exert his mind and energy on depicting their wrinkles and signs of time? I suspect there's some showoff of painter's techniques and question whether truth can be approached through repetition. Nevertheless I understand this being a test of the heart. So dominant is the hegemony, so far from justice and wisdom are we that the only thing he can do is work harder and harder, with all his heart and body. I believe I'm not overstating the truth. Now, Yang Hui is closer to this destiny than ever: people are aging and who we are in truth? He will exemplify by tens of thousands of brushes: after this all-encompassing, all-destroying progress, there's none other whom we can be but ourselves.