Yahon Chang : The Question of Beings

From La Biennale di Venezia to MACRO. International Perspectives is a new exhibition project conceived and curated by Paolo De Grandis and Claudio Crescentini. The project is devoted to the presentation of three selected international exhibitions from the Venice Biennale at MACRO’s spaces, as site-specific, reconstructed, and remodelled artworks. Promoted by Roma Capitale – Superintendent Capitolina of Cultural Heritage and organised in collaboration with PDG Arte Communications.

From La Biennale di Venezia to MACRO. International Perspectives reaches its second stage with Yahon Chang: The Question of Beings, curated by J. J. Shih and Francise Chang. First organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei for the Venice Beinnale. This summer at MACRO it is presented in collaboration with Contemporary Art Foundation and MDCA Foundation. On site at MACRO Testaccio - La Pelanda, Yahon Chang will re-create the conceptual exploration of his site-specific ink painting installations, which were exhibited at The 56th International Art Exhibition at the MOCA Taipei Pavilion for the Collateral Events of the Venice Biennale. Chang’s new works, to be exhibited at La Pelanda, will correspond with the conceptual framework suggested by its past title The Question of Beings, and resonate with the historical site of La Pelanda, an ex-slaughterhouse.

This exhibition at MACRO Testaccio - La Pelanda presents him with new levels of challenges, both physically and mentally. He will create works on site for a period of 5 days, producing a body of ink on canvas painting. Each canvas will measure between 10 to 20 meters long and they will drape down from the ceiling in varying length, allowing the viewers to meander through a labyrinth of ink paintings that confront them with a multitude of countenances. These drapes of long linen canvas echo with the traditional Chinese landscape painting, and evoke the likeness of cascading waterfalls. Yet, the fluidity of his brushstrokes portrays the different countenances of sentient beings in a both abstract and expressive manner, which brings to mind the metaphor of the stream of life. The multiplicity of faces will fill the centre of the exhibition space, long linen canvas will drape to the floor, creating an interactive environment that will allow the audience to enter a world akin to an “alternative Facebook.” This interactive environment will invite the viewer to contemplate the nature of sentient beings, while questioning the meaning of their own identity and the meaning of life.

The site for MACRO Testaccio – La Pelanda was once a slaughterhouse that has been transformed into the contemporary art museum space that it is now. Yahon Chang’s paintings will serve as a commemoration of the past and also propose questions concerning the meaning of life. His ink painting installation at the La Pelanda space corresponds to the horrors and impermanence of life at the slaughterhouse, also laments the holocaust and wars from the last century, bringing one to recall the painful process of human civilisation, and emanate these pain into an artistic expressions. 

Yahon Chang, b. 1948, Taiwan. Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.
 

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