This painting is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity issued by Asia Art Center
Catalogue Note:
Yang Chihung is one of the most important abstract expressionist artists in modern Chinese art history. His works not only portray a type of visual image, but also explore different scenarios in life and accompanying experiences using outside perspectives. In his Botanical Studies series created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yang Chihung returns to the harmonious structure of the universe using a sensual visual and image oriented thought process to express the type of romanticism that comes from an internal rationalization. At this time, what is left is the external event which has already passed and been filtered, leaving a poetic element. What we see is the changing of the natural environment and plants along with time and strokes of the brush.

This work “Blue Undercurrent” was created in 2002 during the artist's transition from his period focusing on plant aesthetics to that on an organically abstract language. After more than a decade, Yang Chihung's abstract plant aesthetic has already matured. In the painting, Yang Chihung's use of earth colors can still be seen in the waves and the ground, but the abstraction methods create changes to the natural landscape. The artist utilizes blurring to successfully create the frenzy that results when sky, earth, and water meet. In addition to the large generous strokes brush strokes, there are also small, delicate details throughout, making the picture both grand and intricate.

Standing in front of the “Blue Undercurrent”, a painting that is also large in size, one can feel themselves being surrounded by the breath of nature. The wind and the sounds it carries, and its speed can almost be felt. Yang Chihung is adept at using abstraction to capture the colors and images of nature. The pictures he creates are restless and free, the feeling of “majestic” in Chinese aesthetics compared to Kant's concept of “exalted”, Yang Chihung's art undoubtedly provides a contemporary interpretation of exalted aesthetics.