Wall Street

In a career of 40 years as a professional artist, Yao Ching-Chang's styles have passed through three totally different stages: moving from Taiwan to New York since the 1970s, Yao started his art career with fabulous "photorealistic" paintings; In the mid-1980s, he gave a touch of surrealism to his Nature Series; In the 1990s, his Life Series favoured Postmodernist expression with the use of symbols, redefined the merged spirits and dialogues between the East and the West. In the sale of this season, the two pieces, Wall Street (Lot 565) and Model in SOHO (Lot 564) were Yao's photorealistic works created in early 1970s. They fully reveal Yao's skill in realistic depictions and the tenderness shown in Eastern literate narrative paintings. Wall Street comes from the Reflection of City Series, which completely captures the spirits of the street views of New York, pedestrians, signboards and hurtling yellow taxis, showing the hustle and bustle of the big city. Yao's paintbrush seems to be a soft focus lens in camera. He makes good use of the surrealistic depiction to deconstruct and compose the concrete jungle with the illusions generated by the layers of reflection of reality. This explores the ambiguity between reality and illusions and molds a new true face of the metropolitan and its culture. Art critic Pedro Tseng reads Yao as "the contrast between the weaving of illusions and reality". In his Model in SOHO created in 1973, the same intension went beyond the superficial visual depiction of the realistic female nude. Looking at the lady's highly realistic skin texture, her indirect gaze makes you wonder if the reality is true. Yao's concept explains his talent in bringing the viewers to the next level, "let the fine brushes bring out the landscape in your heart and depict the sensitivity of nudes; let the lines compose a new song of your creativity, imagination and love".