“While Yahon Chang sought formal education in Chinese brush-and-ink painting and has throughout his life found inspiration in the works of a panoply of historical painting masters, both Eastern and Western, his works defy categorization. Painted and performed in bursts of instinctual creativity, they cannot be judged in ordinary terms: they should be considered of the “untrammeled” (yipin) class. For over a thousand years, Chinese art history has maintained the untrammeled as a special category for artists who function outside the regular, codified desiderata of painting. An untrammeled painter does not respect the supposed apogee of brushwork and composition, instead making freely inventive use of the materials at hand. It is thought that such an approach to painting invariably reveals the quality of the artist’s character.” ——Britta Erickson, Ph.D., curator and art historian
