Ode to Life, CAT, TNUA, Taipei, Taiwan (2022)

Mesmerizing and overwhelming, Yahon Chang’s ink painting performance Ode to Life creates a sense of transcendence in the fluidity of space, embodying the feeling of being transported over flowing water to a place beyond the actual. His act of painting, which consists of drawing, dripping, and even pouring the paint, evokes a phreatic zone or internal reservoir in each viewer’s mindscape. As things progress in his performance, fueled by the centrifugal force that explodes toward exteriority and appropriates it, a dark maelstrom is activated that begins to flood the figures of sentient beings drifting on the painting’s surface. Emancipated from the worries of an impoverished existence, which deprive life of its vital force, this ritual-like performance — which includes some aspects of spectacle — encourages the audience to commune with Nature, which gives form to the allegories of life — especially life’s continuity but also its contradictions and negative dimensions. Like the experience of baptism by immersion, which symbolizes death and life, Yahon Chang’s performance prompts us to invent new forms of life through more playful and shared feelings, to build a community, however ephemeral.
— Manu Park