CHANG LING Illusion Society ─ History of Ordinary Life

2019.06.15 - 2019.08.04 KMFA Galleries 401-403, Multi-Purpose Room


Illusion Society—History of Ordinary Life
By Emerson Kun-Sheng Wang
 
Chang uses rather challenging contents in his paintings to faithfully represent his observation of different facets of our society. No longer paying attention to visual comfort induced by pleasant colors and forms, he focuses more on digging deeper into textural reality and representing through wilder colors and brushstrokes the alienation among people in contemporary society and the nostalgia of the past. Painting is just one of the methods of his artistic creation. Through photography, he captures the eclipse of time at one single moment. Through sculptures, he molds and condenses his emotions into concrete existences. Through installations, he builds an imaginary world of illusions in response to what he has observed from society. 
 
The history of ordinary life is actually what it takes to compose human history. What we see in tiny corners and details is being written continuously in history. The paradoxical and dialectical relationships between “truth” and “fiction” in texts and paintings reflect the helpless illusions with what we consider ideal inside our hearts and what we actually have in reality. 
 
Chang is an artist of storytelling. However, the way he tells his stories does not follow the traditional narrative pattern composed of a beginning, a follow-up, a twist, and an ending. Instead, he starts his stories by finding an entry point among fragments of time and space and then continues to amplify. This amplification does not bring more clarity but more ambiguity, disrupting the mesmerizing appeal of absoluteness. The images of his stories connote a certain level of deviation from society, taking us out of reality to look at where we are. When we look at each incident, we are also simultaneously thinking about our environment and how we are being looked at when we are looking at others. It no longer matters to find out who and what are in the images of Chang’s works. What matters is the inner images and personal experiences we associate with the subjects in the images at the sight of them. In some of Chang’s works, there are only color blocks. However, their reinforcing compositions and lines give rise to a sense of visual tension. These works are neither abstract paintings nor transformations of the real world but the projections of what the artist sees with his eyes and feels in his heart. Through the images of these works, viewers reexperience their emotions in life, which consequently incites even a stronger sense of emotional tension. In history, painting is considered as an art of simulation and representation. When constructing art, artists are also reassembling different facets of history or past time. With different interpretations of history, artists apply different images in the process of reassembly. 
 
In the appreciation and understanding of Chang’s paintings, a closer look at his brushstrokes is of absolute significance. Even though brushstrokes are not considered part of the meanings of images in traditional painting, they manifest the personality of artists in their artistic creation. When painting itself is the goal other than a means, brushstrokes become something to be looked at other than looked through and they are given different meanings. Painting is hence seen as a process and viewers of paintings no longer merely think about the final results of process. 
 
The occasional funnies and absurdity in the images of Chang’s paintings are deliberately created by the artist. People in seemingly expensive and extravagant outfits are depicted with vague facial features while people from lower classes of society are depicted with clear details of their faces and outfits. This contrast highlights the artist’s spirit of socialism and humanitarianism. Through such a method of quasi-mythological narration, Chang infuses more dramatic dynamism into the images of his paintings, making the figures in his paintings look more absurd and the images more dynamic and dramatic. 
 
Due to the importance of brushstrokes in his art, Chang has been experimenting with different materials. He has discovered more historical traces of ordinary life in old photos, digging out the truth of what once happened out there. The process of applying paints onto the photos is  his attempt to erase the traces of the past in the photos and fill in with the current time and space. Chang also attempts to create a miniature of his inner world through his shoebox sculptures.  By exploring what is on the outside, Chang aspires to find the real essence on the inside.