Yang Yang feels passionate about paradise.

　　The foundational color of Yang Yang’s paradise is the pure and undiluted color of blue. Neither texture nor depth can be traced in this definite color, while clouds, white or gray, move heaven, doubt the blue.

　　Her paintings center around deities or angles; petite and naked, these divine creatures are represented in the form of children: they are genuine, unencumbered by the hardships of life, innocent and pure; blushing and rosy-cheeked, their bodies are painted with a translucent pinky shimmer – yet they are lacking wings. Standing, sitting, lying, or sleeping, they express anger, bite their thumbs, use pacifiers or taste a lollipop, eat litchi nuts, take a bubble bath, or simply gaze at the wind and clouds.

　　Who are they?

　　They do not have names, with the exception of “Ophelia.” But even the name “Ophelia” does not belong to the petite goddess floating in water. Her frightened eyes in “The Paradise of Ophelia” even seem to urgently propose the question: “Who is Ophelia?”

　　These nameless children do not resemble real individuals, and Yang Yang uses only few models, for a “me” in real life would only burden paradise.

　　This paradise belongs to children and youngsters. A Cambridge scholar once remarked that Yang Yang’s paintings bring to the fore the repressed and forgotten child in everyone’s imagination. I agree. But it also daunted to me that things might be more complicated than our friend, who lives thousands of miles away, implied. Maybe, these children, while hiding in the past, are watching us growing old, offering company on our journey through the irreversible passing of time. Yet another interpretation suggests that they themselves harbor deep-rooted anxieties towards their own existence in paradise.

　　Nothing in Yang Yang’s paradise can be traced back to its place of origin – the pure color of blue unsettles our sense of space, rendering impossible any attempt to locate the water source for the bathing angles and the floating Ophelia. It is a peaceful setting, and simultaneously connotes a source of danger. The composition of Yang Yang’s paintings is stable and balanced, a reflection of her persistent classicist orientation. However, there is one element that disrupts the perception of stability and harmony: the eyes.

　　These round and innocent eyes are meandering and at times appear aimless, without focus, being lost in time and space. In actuality their gaze is directed towards themselves, in an inward looking manner. Full of doubt, their eyes seem to question paradise: Why am I here?

　　One particular angel encapsulates the epitome of doubt and hesitation; wrapped in borderless blue, she is stretching out her hands in an upright position, covering her eyes as if to ask: “What is the next step?”

　　While looking at this painting, it suddenly occurred to me that there was no space, no beginning and no ending. The angles and deities were prisoners of paradise.

　　For sure, Yang Yang’s angles are busy. Naturally, without uttering a word, they are engaged in mundane affairs – eating (e.g. fruits), idling (e.g. biting thumbs) or playing (e.g. blowing bubbles) – all of which represent classical symptoms of the oral stage of human development. But what really caught my interest is the following:

　　1) Paradise is characterized by sheer happiness. Is there among the broad range of human activities any other source of happiness than to indulge in food, idleness, or pleasure?

　　2) Angles are by no means happy; their mouths desire bodily and sensual pleasures, while their eyes are longing for something higher and yearn for something more. Yet paradise is only willing to satisfy the demands of their mouths, leaving the call of their eyes unanswered.

　　3) In one painting Ophelia stretches out her hand and opens her mouth with a great sense of loss, frustration, and disappointment, as if being surprised to find out how useless her hands and mouth are. This sense of disorientation is clearly revealed by the gaze of her eyes directed at somewhere else and simultaneously at her self. In yet another painting, Ophelia’s lips are tightly closed, and a cluster of foam rinses through her stiff hands. Her eyes are narrow and have lost their angelic innocence; with sadness in her face, as if in mourning, Ophelia adopts the demeanor of a ‘modern girl’ whose gaze bravely faces death, painfully aware of a perishing paradise.

　　Only a Chinese painter at the very beginning of the 21st century is capable of depicting paradise in such a way. The color theme of Yang Yang’s paintings conveys the joy and happiness of this world. In addition, the incorporation of wind, clouds, water and bubbles as structural elements in her paintings engender the feeling of lightness and ephemerality. Yang Yang’s paradise is so vulnerable and fragile, that in the end it cannot represent “eternity.” As a traditional Chinese Buddhist saying about worldly affairs describes it best: As Thunder, as dreams, and as dew,

　　May perish in a very moments few.

　　The most profound conflict in Yang Yang’s paintings is contextual. Any Chinese person can tell that her understanding and representation of paradise sharply contrasts the almighty heaven ruled by the mythical Chinese emperor, the Jade Emperor of Heaven. In her paintings, Yang Yang has wiped out any visible cultural signifiers, transforming paradise into an abstract, pure and yet worldly space. The Christian origin of her paradise is apparent and self-explanatory – not just because her paintings depict angles and “Ophelia,” but also because Yang Yang shares with any contemporary observer of this new century a common conviction: That this is the only possible paradise, a paradise that is shared by a globalized world.

　　All inhabitants of her paradise are Chinese. Their skin and facial features are Chinese. Even though they are destined to be angles and goddesses, they are by no means able to match up to heaven. It is not incidental that they are children; they have no remembrances, nor any memory of this paradise; their existence is reduced to consumption and to the feeling of uncertainty and disorientation.

　　Yang Yang has a profound passion for paradise. Indeed, imaginations that address concepts of “paradise” and “happiness” constitute a concealed node of modern Chinese thinking. Our dreams, illusions, hopes, sadness, anger and anxieties are all gravitating towards this abstraction. Paradise entails the promise of happiness, but we somehow do not dare to believe in its existence, and hence, it is impossible for us to dwell in it.

　　Yang Yang has an intuitive understanding of the complex Chinese Zeitgeist and the popular post-modern orientations that characterize much of Pop culture. The latter, despite its ability to capture modern sentiments and concerns, is characterized by chaos, confusion and conflict, while Yang Yang’s art moves beyond these narrow restrictions, encapsulating a surpassing insight of “not to be” which is beyond the painting, but belongs to the painter. This insight enables the artist to know “right” from “wrong” and to transcend the absurdity of the preceding chaos, confusion and conflict; it allows the artist to distance him or herself from the mundane chaos and disorder through an unconscious, intuitive “heavenly” perspective.

　　Yang Yang is; she is both in and beyond the paintings, in paradise and in the human world. Her paintings do not incorporate an outsider’s perspective and are not meant “to be seen.” The children in her work are not “shown,” they simply “are” – in the same manner as the “being” of a tree is not to be criticized or appraised. Towards whatever object the children’s gaze is directed at, it ultimately is directed towards themselves; the children’s naïve and innocent gaze is following their own stories as their grand journey along the path of destiny unfolds.

　　April, 2007

　　English translation by Hilde Becker and Tian Liang

作者：Li,By,Jingze