Yong Ping always wanted to be different. When Chen Zhen passed away, Yong Ping kept saying not to make things too complicated or grand, so the deceased may rest in tranquility. I have quoted his words—composed in memory of Chen Zhen—several times at my friends’ memorials, “as long as one is being thought of and talked about, he is not dead.” I did not expect to use this line about Yong Ping today...
In the 90s, that group of artist friends in Paris—Yong Ping and Shen Yuan, Tianna and Jiechang, Chen Zhen and Xu Min, Dawei and Yanyan, Hanru and Evelyne, Pei-Ming—all had great ambition and little money in their pockets. These were loving couples; they did their filial duty to their families and were always warm-hearted to their friends. Every time my wife Hong Hong and I went to Paris, it felt as if it were springtime, and we almost never wanted to go back to Japan. Every day in Paris, one of these friends would host a gathering. At Shen Yuan’s, Yong Ping would be in charge of washing the dishes; when there were many of us in attendance, he would serve as chef for the evening. On one occasion, Xu Min had a wedding ceremony commission and we all helped cook, earning the money together. The group was open and optimistic; we talked about art and life; we supported each other and did not shy away from voicing criticism toward one another. Yong Ping’s comments were often sharp but never went too far. Even as serious as he was, he would burst out in laughter when we were joking around.
After the turmoil of 1989, we were suddenly like wandering orphans. Besides facing the difficulties and challenges of the world, we also had to confront our responsibilities and duties under this domestic situation. We often gathered and discussed “strategies and tactics” …
Yong Ping was from the same province as Hong Hong and I are, Fujian. His ancestral home is my hometown, Quanzhou; he must have been born and raised in Xiamen, as he always wrote so on his resume. He knew Minnan dialect but rarely spoke it. We thought that he didn’t understand it, but he would come to comment on Hong Hong and my conversations in Minnan dialect…
I don’t speak very good English, nor did Yong Ping have a strong grasp of French. We often laughed that he looked like a smuggler—it is said that when he went through the customs and was questioned by the officer, he immediately started to strip off his clothes! The officer had to call this off at once.
At the beginning, Shen Yuan sold paintings on the street to support Yong Ping, and only started to make her own art once their living conditions improved. She admired him to the extent that she accidently spoke about what “Yong Ping said” as “Chairman Mao said” several times…
In 1991, we were shown together in an exhibition in Fukuoka, Japan, where we all stayed with the exhibition producer, Yamano, at his home. We didn’t go to restaurants and instead cooked ourselves, saving every penny of the artist production fee for the making of artworks – Yong Ping bought tens of trucks of cement, and while the trucks carried the cement, it kept dripping out and spilt along the road. The Japanese national weather forecast was broadcast every day at dusk, and the phrase “highest temperature” (saikou kionn) sounded just like “Cai Guo-Qiang” in Minnan dialect. Yong Ping couldn’t help complaining, “how is it that even though the exhibition hasn’t open yet, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang’ is on the news every day? ‘Tokyo Cai Guo-Qiang,’ ‘Osaka Cai Guo-Qiang’…”
This summer, I went back to Pourrières in southern France, the village in which the Chine demain pour hier exhibition took place in 1990. On the top of land where Yong Ping made the I Ching symbol in the ground as building foundation, the villagers have built their houses. I don’t know if the rooms are constructed according to the rules of I Ching, or if they would bring good fortunes to the people living in there.
At the turn of century in 1999, Harald Szeemann curated the 48th Venice Biennale. I made Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, Chen Zhen “beat drums” in Jue Chang—Fifty Strokes to Each, and Yong Ping represented the Pavilion of France—just as I have a strong connection to the Japanese, Yong Ping is very much loved by the French. There were more than twenty Chinese artists who participated that year, the biggest and the last “Year of China” in the Western world!
Yong Ping had an aura of “angry youth,” while simultaneously an impression of an elderly doctrinaire. He often gave irrelevant answers that confused people. But for the principles he believed in, there was no ambiguity. For instance, he was highly sensitive to the way people and himself wrote about Taiwan. He was never unclear about art either—always resolute about what to do, how to do, and why so.
He thought meticulously and profoundly but was probably not interested in being perceived as enigmatic. In 2016, I curated an exhibition in Qatar titled What About the Art? Contemporary Art From China, and gave the largest gallery to him. I was deeply impressed when he discussed the purposes of the exhibition and how to realize such purposes effectively; he pointed out that providing adequate explanation of the works would help convince the organizer to accept the works more easily.
While lots of Chinese artists tend to use ideas in Laozi, Zhuangzi, Buddhism, and Zen as easy references, Yong Ping’s artworks and methodologies truly embody these thoughts, and his life was dedicated to the comprehension of the embedded principles… Although quite a few times he employed Bagua (Eight Trigrams) and fortune-telling in his artworks, I believe that these were simply techniques for him to realize conceptions rooted in the realm of methodology and philosophy, since he didn’t seem to worship Buddhas or believe in superstition or Fengshui…unlike us!
Most importantly, he knew how to play with these ideas—he played with the philosophies of Laozi and Zhuangzi, as well as with Dadaism from the West. He played around the West with the East and the East through the West, he even played with the system of museums—he was a big player!
Yong Ping also constantly play with his intellectual and physical strength. Regardless of how grand the scale of a project was, he did it himself. He was a model of the working class! He had a happy family and was healthy and self-disciplined. He always carried with him a jump rope so that he could exercise everywhere, unlike myself, who looks for gyms everywhere. We thought that he would be a centenarian, living an eternal and balanced life akin to a small but steady stream that never exhausts itself.
Chen Zhen suffered from disease since youth; Dawei was nervous about his premature ventricular contraction, while Yong Ping and I were both quite thin and appeared to be fragile. We both made fun of Dawei, saying that he would be doing quite well even when we are all gone.
I did not see Yong Ping often in recent years, but I have seen his works around the world. Now that he is gone, I will not see any more of his new works!
As he said, if we think about and talk about him, he will still be with us. He will not be gone if the world of art history continues to mention him. Of course, if we had attempted to discuss with him people writing biographies or building monuments in art history, he sure would have laughed at us.
That was his attitude even in death, happening fast and without fuss.
As years have grown on me, friends have left one after another. At this moment of early winter, while the land awaits the return of Spring, our lives are coursing into nowhere but the depth of cold…
Cai Guo-Qiang, Hong Hong Wu
October 21, 2019
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From left: Gu Wenda, Yan Pei-Ming, Huang Yong Ping, and Cai Guo-Qiang at Chine demain pour hier curated by Fei Dawei, Pourrières, France, 1990. Courtesy Asia Art Archive and Fei Dawei Archive
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Cai Guo-Qiang, Huang Yong Ping, Gu Wenda, Shingo Yamano, Fei Dawei, Yang Jiechang, Wang Luyan at the Exceptional Passage exhibition symposium, Fukuoka, Japan, 1991.
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Huang Yong Ping with his work for Chine demain pour hier, Pourrières, France, 1990. © Eric Arrouas et Les Domaines de l’art
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News article on exhibition Chine demain pour hier in local newspaper Pourrières; photo by Var Matin, 1990.
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From left: Shen Yuan, Huang Yong Ping, Wu Yanyan, Fei Dawei, Wu Hong Hong, and Cai Guo-Qiang at the exhibition opening of Vivid Memories, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France, 2014.
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Grieving Yong Ping: "Elegy" in rewind, 2019
（Edited from Elegy: Explosion Event for the Opening of Cai Guo-Qiang: The Ninth Wave, 2014.
Directed by Shanshan Xia; produced by 33 Studio）
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