mike hj chang

Copyright 2005-2020
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Mike HJ Chang is a Taiwanese American artist and educator in fine arts. He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, both in the USA. Chang currently resides and works in Singapore.

Chang’s process involves a curiosity towards conventions of seeing, resulting in shapes, forms and objects that claim a presence of their own. The impression given is of an alien observing and processing a landscape for the first time. Recent projects such as Dog and Butterfly, Pilots and Suppose there is A combines architecture, furniture, and painting that reference spatial configuration such as Plato’s Cave, cinematic spaces, and the mechanism of the camera obscura. Chang questions what is seen and what is doing the seeing. We are given tools and conventions of seeing that may measure our sense of the world but can actually become instruments of distortion. The artworks explore ways of playing with these instruments rather than be subjected to them.

Chang’s works evoke an atmosphere of humor and at times of melancholy and their natural handmade texture avoids any sense of clearly defined forms. This characteristic embodies his artistic exploration of optical mechanisms that process our visual formulation, which are signaled by his use of generic images. Their egoless role in our visual understanding is shown in his motifs of a sun, a moon, a tree, a figure – that are continuously and quietly integrated in his art.

Chang has exhibited his works in prominent art spaces such as Chan Hampe Galleries in Gillman Barracks, Peninsular, Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore, Esplanade’s Jendela, Post-Museum, Sculpture Square, Art Stage Singapore Shanghai West Bund Art Fair, and Yeo Workshop since 2011.