Jean-Hubert MARTIN

FR / Interview Huang Yong Ping (1992)

“JHM : Penses-tu que tes œuvres réalisées à Xiamen étaient en lien avec la situation politique et sociale de la Chine ?
HYP : Bien entendu. La Chine à l’époque sortait lentement d’un contexte où tout était politisé et où il était difficile pour les gens d’exister en dehors de ce contexte sociopolitique.

JHM : En Chine, j’ai rencontré des artistes et des peintres chinois mais je n’ai vu aucun lien particulier avec la politique dans leurs œuvres. Si l’on considère qu’en Chine tout était politique, comment le déceler dans les œuvres d’art ?
HYP : Il s’agit là d’un phénomène particulier à la Chine. Une politisation excessive entraîne une attitude inverse, une tendance apolitique, surtout chez les artistes qui sombrent alors dans une éternelle représentation d’eux-même et dans un formalisme purement esthétique. Tout ça pour s’affranchir du politique.”

CN / 黄永砅与让—于贝尔•马尔丹 (1992)

Evelyne JOUANNO

EN / According to the ‘Potential of The Situation’ (1997)

“My first encounter with the work of Huang Yong Ping was in 1990, when he took part in an exhibition in a small village in southern France, close to the famous Montagne Sainte Victoire. His proposition was to build a series of walls in a field that would form the Sheng hexagram which signifies ‘an upwards movement’. He had come upon this hexagram several months earlier when consulting the I Ching about the exhibition. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is the Chinese book of divination and philosophy, and the source of Confucian and Taoist philosophy. However, having dug the foundations, he suddenly decided to discontinue the project and leave it in a state of non-completion.“

Philippe VERGNE

EN / Why Am I Afraid of Huang Yong Ping? (2005)

“Things happen. As one works on an exhibition, things happen, coincidences, which make the project more, or less, relevant—whether or not these events are planned, whether or not they are the sweet fruit of a chance meeting. It might just mean that the project was meant to happen, at this place and time—or not. It might mean that the projects that punctuate one’s life in a meaningful way do not follow any plan or strategy, but simply unfold according to the way things go. They depend on the propensity of things. What happens, happens. What does not is simply not meant to happen.”

CN / 我为何惧怕黄永砅? (2005)

HOU Hanru

EN / Change Is The Rule (2005)

“Huang Yong Ping’s art is an entire ontology in itself. It’s a universe unto itself, and like the universe itself, it’s a complex system generated out of paradox and perplexity, which endow it with ultimate dynamism and vitality. His art is powerful but intelligent, revealing the essence of existence: that the truth of the world is that there is no unique ontological truth. The world is an eternal dilemma and paradox. And it makes sense only when this paradox exposes itself. Art is a way to reveal this and proves that such an understanding and its revelation are the means of achieving ultimate freedom, beyond the obsession with pursuing the truth. Huang Yong Ping’s art incarnates this perfectly because his acts are always “betraying” his concepts, and this is the very center of his conceptual universe. His works always involve a deferring process.”

CN / 变化才是规则 (2005)

WANG Min An

CN / “意义”的流转和回旋 (2008)

Jean DE LOISY

EN / The Sleep of Reason (2009)

“Nothing has changed. Up until 1989, in China, Huang Yong Ping was building up a combative body of work whose ambition was to arrive at a new way of linking art, culture and political awareness. A slogan, or rather, a magnificent aphorism worthy of Filliou’s famous words, summed up the work he did at the time as a member of the Xiamen Dada movement: “A new life calls for new art, a new life has no need of art.” This affirmation was illustrated by the destruction of the Event exhibition in November 1986, which has become part of artistic legend.”

FR / Le Sommeil de la Raison (2009)

Donatien GRAU

EN / A World Without Me (2020)

“Huang Yongping’s work always existed without him. He was not an artist who would put himself on the center stage. Living in Ivry–sur–Seine, his position was reminiscent of the description Pierre Hadot gave of the Stoic philosophers: the inner stronghold. He lived, physically, in an inner stronghold, a place remote yet at the center, separated from the world and yet in it. He was above us, as a stronghold is. He resisted to the pressure of the world around him, and never yielded. He could not be forced into anything. It was not simply his temper, or his way of living: it was his philosophy of life, which we have only started to discover.“

FR / Un Monde Sans Moi (2020)

CN / 一个没有我的世界 (2020)

FEI Dawei

EN / The Whispers of a Ventriloquist (2021)

“Huang Yong Ping was a small man. As if his head had been baptized by a whirlwind, all of his long hair whirled around in the same direction, covering his left temple and leaving his right temple bare. A man of few words, Huang Yong Ping had a pleasant countenance but a firm gaze. He read and wrote a lot. He devoted a great deal of his writing to a dislike of explaining his work, repeatedly emphasizing that his own interpretations of it were temporary and easily replaceable, while other people’s interpretations had nothing to do with the work in question. No other artist has swum through the ocean of language as he did without becoming drenched in the language itself. “

FR / Murmures D’un Ventriloque (2021)

CN / 腹中密语 (2021)

Martina KÖPPEL-YANG

EN / From One Passage to Another (2021)

“In 1986 a mesmerizing personality of the post-War art world passed away in the German city of Düsseldorf: Joseph Beuys. His goal to fuse art and life, as well as his strategy to combine artistic practice and activism influence the art world still today. At nearly the same moment, in the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen, a similarly charismatic figure, Huang Yongping, created a set of works that belong to the most groundbreaking of contemporary Chinese art: his Roulette Series and other related works.”

FR / D’un Passage à Un Autre (2021)

CN / 从一条路到另一条路 (2021)