Yang Jian currently lives and works between Beijing, Guangzhou, and Yunnan, China.

Born in Lincang, Yunnan Province, he studied in the inaugural preparatory program of Yunnan Arts University in 1988, attended Yunnan Provincial College of Culture and Arts in 1991, and later pursued advanced studies in Oil Painting at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University in 2004, where he studied under Xin Dongwang, Chen Danqing, and Shi Chong.

Since 2007, Yang has continuously developed his Writing Series, using cursive calligraphy as a foundation while incorporating found objects, industrial materials, and mixed media to explore the contemporary transformation of traditional cultural forms. In 2009, he began experimenting with the traditional Chinese chalk-line tool (modou), developing an ongoing body of work in which repeated line-snapping actions generate visual fields imbued with spatial, temporal, and contemplative dimensions.

Working across painting, writing, installation, and mixed media, Yang investigates the relationships between order and chance, process and outcome, tradition and contemporaneity. Through sustained bodily practice, he has established a distinctive visual language that bridges cultural inheritance and contemporary artistic inquiry.