56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2015)

The Question of Beings exhibition was Chang’s first major painting-as-performance plus installation event and was located in an orphanage annexed to the secularized eighteenth-century church of Santa Maria della Pietà, dedicated to Mary holding the body of her crucified son. Fittingly, Yahon Chang’s response to the poignant site was an expression of concern for the emotional and spiritual states in which sentient beings exist. Creating an immersive space totally surrounding the viewer, he covered the walls, windows, floor, and part of the ceiling with images of animal faces, mainly human. The vibrancy of the brushwork charged the space with palpable energy. Alternating areas of ink and bright acrylic and gouache color with monochrome ink, and shifting between easily readable and almost abstract tracts, the installation was designed with the kind of rhythm that is usually expected of two-dimensional painting.

While parts of the installation consisted of digital collage prints, much was painted in situ on a scale quite astonishing to many people. Wielding a brush almost as tall as himself — necessary to reach the ceiling, but also a regular tool of Chang’s — he painted dense fields of visages embodying the vast range of emotion, including ecstasy, pain, puzzlement, equanimity, sorrow, distress, and so on, rendering them with highly expressive Chinese brushwork, so that the space vibrated with emotion.
— Britta Erickson