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. Past 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 playful images and objects.
Chang’s solo exhibition Calendar of Dilation at Yeo Workshop deals with the notion of disorientation, time dilation, seasickness, and the need for new markers and tools to locate oneself in this peculiar time.
