YANG JIECHANG (b.1956) Stranger than Paradise - Grey, 2011YANG JIECHANG (b.1956)Stranger than Paradise - Grey, 2011Ink on paper, mounted on canvas, framed. 198.5cm wide x 92cm high (78in wide x 36in high).楊詰蒼(1956年生) 比天堂還奇妙——灰 水墨紙本 裱於畫布 2011年作Published, Illustrated and Exhibited: Michael Goedhuis, The Ink Art of China, London, 2015, pp.26-27.展覽著錄：Michael Goedhuis著，《水墨中国》，伦敦，2015年，第26-27頁Born in Foshan, Guangdong, in 1956, a teenager during the Cultural Revolution, he was apprenticed to a master calligrapher. Between 1974 and 1978, Yang studied paper mounting, folk art, and traditional painting at the Foshan Folk Art Research Institute; for the following four years he continued his study of Chinese painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. After his graduation, he took up two years of formal studies of Daoism under the Master Huangtao at Mount Luofu, which had had a profound influence on his art. Upon his marriage to the writer and critic Martina Köppel-Yang, he moved to Paris in 1988, and he has been living and working in Paris and Heidelberg since then. His extensive training in Chinese and European artistic traditions combined with the range of his artistic ideas has given Yang Jiechang uncommon versatility. His works range from painting, collage, and sculpture to multimedia installation, site-specific works, and performance. Yang gained international recognition through the exhibition of his large monochrome ink paintings in 'Les Magiciens de la Terre' at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1989. He also exhibited in the landmark 'China Avant/Garde' exhibition at Beijing's China National Art Museum that year; Ink Worlds: contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang, Stanford, 2018, p.198.Yang Jiechang has recently had a major exhibition at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, Paris (6 July 2022 — 24 October 2022), and his paintings are in many important collections globally, including the Brooklyn Museum; Hong Kong Museum of Art; Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan; Kunstverein Heidelberg; Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; and the Rockefeller Foundation, New York. His 'Stranger than Paradise' series appears to combine elements of Chinese landscape painting, but echoes Hieronymus Bosch's 'The Garden of Earthly Delights', with various animals dotted throughout engaged in pleasurable activities.