Fran Chang is a Taiwanese-Brazilian artist, born in 1990. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts from the Academia de Belas Artes de São Paulo, with an academic extension in Astrophysics and Astronautics from the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Chang received the “Arte como respiro” award from Itaú Cultural in 2020.

The artist’s work is part of the collection of MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, selected by critic and curator Paulo Herkenhoff. She had her first solo exhibition at VERVE (São Paulo, SP), called “No mar com as estrelas” [“In the sea with the stars”], in 2021, in addition to participating in other group exhibitions.

Chang also worked as an assistant on the project at the Venice Biennale (2017), the Pompidou Center (2018) and the São Paulo Biennale (2016). She worked in the restoration and conservation department of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and developed artistic research in studios in London and Taiwan.

A flyover through the sky. Sunbeams break through the clouds and touch the ground, the water, the earth. The drops that accumulate in part or another of this blue expanse condense, transforming that space. The wind blows and invades the atmosphere inhabited by human beings, but covered by molecules, which resist and spread. In fact, it is as if for a few seconds we had part of our atoms loose in the air, observing this natural spectacle, and we realized during such a journey of our significance in the world, as simple as it is small, close to the immensity that surrounds us.

Words seem to reach only part of what Fran Chang’s painting makes us feel. The works are like windows, through which it is possible to glimpse a fantastic world, which mixes the real and the imaginary towards places that we may perhaps come to know through the cosmos. A kind of clash between heaven and earth, underwater and stellar landscapes, which are mirrored in the creation of a new world. The universe even serves as the basis for the artist’s superhuman leap towards painting. Bachelor of Visual Arts from Belas Artes de São Paulo, Chang did an extension course in Astrophysics from UFSC and Astronautics from UFSC. This formation gives her a look that travels light years, delicately unraveled by the fine bristles of her brush, which cross silk, the primordial fabric in her studio.

Of Asian descent, Chang brings more than the physical characteristics of such a relationship with the eastern side of the earth. Her mother was born in Taiwan and from there she brought customs, studies and teachings passed on organically to her daughter, such as her love for manual techniques, fashion and sewing. So, before dedicating herself to painting, Chang got involved in fabrics and followed with her attentive eyes the route of the one she would choose to stretch on her chassis. The transparency of the plot is one of the inherent points of her work, which lets the ambient light play its transforming role in each piece. Light is a fundamental part of the artist’s creation, both that which she herself develops through the colors she chooses to compose her paintings, and that which permeates the world we inhabit and highlights specific scenes of the image that is integrated in front of us.

In the arts, she worked in the restoration and conservation center at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, and was an assistant to powerful names in contemporary art, such as Sofia Borges. At the invitation of the guest curator of the 2018 Bienal, she carried out a reactivation of Tunga’s work, through performance. From such experiences, she took off on a solo flight and was soon awarded the Itaú Cultural Arte como Respiro award, in 2020. This universe of references was condensed in the exhibition on display at Verve Galeria, in São Paulo. The space, led by artist Allann Seabra and architect Ian Duarte, discovered the artist’s delicate production in research through the virtual world during the current health pandemic, which has promoted fruitful cybernetic encounters. After all, from darkness there is light.

More than anything, Chang is the free translation of the triad discussed by Plato, which revolves around the good, the beautiful and the true. Your universe is full of truths. There are no mincing words in his repertoire, only the flash that comes as light directly to the viewer’s eyes. The magic of his production is science, but also poetry. It’s a sea with stars.