Two visitors in front of the One Hundred Layers of Ink Series at Yang Jiecang's ongoing solo exhibition.[Photo by Deng Zhangyu/China Daily]

In 1989, Yang Jiecang was one of the three artists representing China at Paris' Pompidou's contemporary art show, Magician of the Earth. He presented his One Hundred Layers of Ink Series, which was different from what people traditionally understood about Chinese ink.

Now, the artist is showing his early works from between 1985 and 1999 at Beijing's Ink Studio.

Entitled Earth Root, Yang's solo show features 37 pieces.

Unlike traditional Chinese art focusing on landscapes, figures, flowers and birds, Yang's early works apply layer after layer of ink on rice paper and gauze, all in deep black.

"Each of them is a piece of memory and a diary of my life," says Yang.

The 61-year-old jokes that poverty was the reason he put layer after layer on paper.

"Two pieces of rice paper cost about 6 yuan then,which accounted for one-third of my monthly salary," says Yang.He even used soy sauce to paint.

In fact, repetition is a technique in traditional Chinese figurative painting, called sanfan jiuran, which literally means three layers of alum and nine layers of color.