Yang Maoyuan: Eidos

Platform China is pleased to announce the new exhibition of Yang Maoyuan “Eidos” . The opening reception is on Saturday, October 29, 2016; on view through December 20, 2016. The curator Bao Dong titled exhibition “Eidos”, referring to his work, which implies “He does not divide the world into form and content, but instead always grasps existence as a whole.” 

In Bao Dong’s opinion, the art of Yang Maoyuan has always pursued some form of the nonexchangeable, the unexplainable, the unclassifiable, that which cannot be placed into the existing system of artistic discourse and meaning.Heterogeneity is a form of existence that cannot be encompassed in the system of society or be systematized in any way. This is precisely what lies at the core of avant-garde art, but for Yang Maoyuan, this is a heterogeneity of an ontological nature, rather than temporal discrepancy or political difference. His work is a process of pursuing or probing this heterogeneity. He references then removes context, reveals then conceals background, until that presence which cannot be restored emerges to be seen. What emerges from these shapes, masses, colors, materials or objects is always a primal form. 

Unlike the purely conceptual nature of philosophy, Yang Maoyuan’s images with archaeological tones tend instead towards a cultural history existence. In employing these different images and shapes, he appears to be summoning some universal form, an existence that is self-sufficient like mathematics, independent of knowledge or experience—belonging to man, but transcending the individual, belonging to culture but approaching substantive existence.