South Jersey Artist Studio Tour - Chung-Fan Chang
Can you tell us about your practice?
Chang: I’m from Taipei, Taiwan. Which is a small island from China. So I grew up there, received all of my formal education and I moved to the United States for a Master’s degree. So I did all my formal training in Taiwan so that is the roots of my studio practice. For my Masters, I was in Atlanta, Georgia for a couple of years then moved to Jackson, Mississippi. So all of these places that I lived, the landscapes specifically have influenced me. In the northeast. Four years in Atlanta, four years in Jackson, and now seven years here. Now it is half of my time in the United States, and in New Jersey, specifically in South Jersey where the Pine Barrens and all the landscape. That kind of influences me and continues to influence me in my studio practice. Also colors. Is a central part of my practice because I don’t know if you’ve visited Taiwan before but there are temples, pop-up theatre performances that use very vivid colors to decorate temples or theatre pop ups on the streets. A lot of neon colors. I grew up seeing all of those vibrant colors in the city. Those are definitely some of my influences. I am so drawn to small pops of color everyday. Like people and how they dress, earrings, dress, fashion.
So I want to include landscapes with colors and how that color can be conflicting, or confronting or uncomfortable yet comfortable and beautiful. So all that mixed experience I want to explore in two dimensional surfaces.
I have used colors, fluorescent colors. I am always drawn to the vibrancy of the colors. I am inspired by the fall leaves, when you see how the tip of the tree starts to change and the vibrancy of the colors appear in some trees or some leaves. It makes me stop in the middle of the walk. I’m just like Look! Look at that little piece. I am interested in how color affect our visions in the day to day experience and culturally.
Can you tell us about your mural?
Chang: I use the positive space of the background to interact without adding to the surface. That was the idea of this, an abstract landscape.
It starts from here, where it is kind of like a rockish, where you can stand and where you can cave looking. People can walk around. It is like floating islands. Some people say it looks like organs so it depends on your personal experience to the paintings. Landscape. Cave. Island. Those are my inspiration to the nature that I want to put into the mural. That is also connected to my paintings because it is all about landscape and colors.
What are you currently working on?
Chang: I continue this Kite Series. Because of the shape of the canvas, some people think it looks like a kite or geometry so I continue to call it kite. It is what I am currently working on, it combines geometry with abstraction, landscape, cave, gradation of color, and color interactions. I am also interested in how edges contribute to the viewer’s attention. Different edges, soft edges, hard edges and how you can create tensions between these two different types of edges and how that occurs in the paintings. How I can use that to manipulate the visual movement in the canvas. That’s something I’m working on right now along with colors of course.
Why is art important to you?
Chang: I think it is personal fulfillment and I think art is a form of intent to communicate and it makes me happy. It makes me really happy so that’s why it is really important to me. That is just something that I've found at an early age and I kind of just stuck to it. Artists have a responsibility to communicate their vision of whether the beauty is, the culture, the sickness of social issues, what is important to the artist. For me it is for what I am coming from, my experience, living in the States and Taiwan. Which is two places I still don't feel 100 percent I belong to in a way that I travel so much back and forth to my family in Taiwan and here in the United states. So it is always a struggle. Displacement. Art is important for me to convey uncertainty. Colors, conformation of color interaction. Kind of like with people too.
How has South Jersey impacted your work?
Chang: I particularly want to talk about the landscape of South Jersey. The landscape in the majority is different from Taiwan and the United States. Taiwan has a more subtropical climate so the trees are a lot shorter and the color is more dense and heavy. In general, there are differences in the south and north. I am from the north part. In the south part of Jersey I was really drawn to the landscape of the pine barrens and the jersey shore. I am still exploring. The birds and how close we are to the shore and the waves that start to influence me more so now since Taiwan is also an island surrounded by ocean. The shore is so different over there in Taiwan. The rocks and the reefs and here the sand is white, but not white white, the sand here is very different. The shore scenery is very different. That has influenced me personally in a way more so and not so much the people because I am kind of in my own world really. But for the most part, the landscape kind of influenced me the most. The Pine Barrens and the shore.
It’s finding both beauties in the two different categories but missing each other. And that, Oh I like it but I miss the other part and trying to find compromise to find your place in between. That is always a journey. Adapting but yet coexisting with your history.
WIth people too, the people in the South versus the people in the Northeast versus my home country. There’s always adaptation. How they perceive me as an individual, how I interact with them. It is always different. You’d be surprised! That is always creating conflict, uncomfortable settings, confrontation and that is the color clash in my work.
I commute an hour each way for work so the commute of seeing the trees, it just feeds me. The blueberry pickings and the seasons, the cherry pickings, then the peaches are very different from Taiwan where there are not a lot of berries. There are more pineapples, mangoes, and that kind of stuff. It is very different out here too. That landscape and experience is part of my work. But seeing the garden state of New Jersey. I’m still exploring the garden state. It makes sense when I see the blueberry farms.
South Jersey Artist Studio Tour (SJAST) is a pilot project created by the South Jersey Cultural Alliance and funded by the Humanities Lab Project through the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. The South Jersey Cultural Alliance would like to thank the artist, Chung-Fan Chang.
