Painted with acrylic paint on silk, Chang’s works invite the touch, the sin of the temptation to manipulate the paintings, to place them against the light at various angles, to see their verses and to analyze the meticulous ingenuity of the fitting of the woods that compose the cassis on which the artist lays the veil. Chang promotes a curiosity about the painting platform itself, questioning the technical possibilities and seeing how far one can go.
It is known that a haiku is textual structure constructed from two synthetic parts. Although they appear to inhabit different worlds at first glance, these two parts are connected by a cut, the kiru. This cut, paradoxically, connects these two universes and proposes a beautiful union between two images that were until then irreconcilable. This is how the artist integrates the power of her paintings with the vulnerability of her titles, from which her works cannot be dissociated. By painting a blazing cloudy sky with clouds like islands, as seen through an airplane window, the artist baptizes one of her paintings as “Você é a menina que sempre foi” [“You are the girl you always were”]. On a placid beach, with clear skies and the horizon line formed by a mountain range, topped by a distant and lonely moon, we are accompanied by the title “Receio ser arrastado longe demais” [”Fear of being dragged too far”]. The integration between the subtlety of the delicate painting on silk and the assertiveness of the titles is breathtaking.
Chang also focuses on astrophysics – a field in which se also studied academically – and chess in her works. Analogously to the painting of nephology images – the study of clouds -, she titles works such as “Zeitnot” and “J’Adoube”, both expressions of chess games that serve to refer to relationships with the other, as if love were a game. The first term, “Zeitnot”, a German word, characterizes a situation in which the player is constrained by time, forcing a quick decision, as if the surrounding walls were quickly asphyxiating. The artist illustrates this moment with a top view of a clear blue sky filled with clouds with three large stars above the horizon line.
When painting a torrid black sky full of stars in a profuse meteor shower over the sea, with the moon at the crown of the composition, Chang translates this image with another expression of chess: “J’Adoube”, a French expression used when a player announces that will touch the pieces on the board, whether theirs or the opponent’s, to adjust them to the best configuration. Perhaps this is a precious description of what love is like. I warn you that I’m going to go through you pieces, inside, so that we can do everything in the best possible way, under a night sky with exit wounds. From these very powerful contrasts obtained bu subtlety, Chang creates an imagery and poetic atmosphere, elevating us to the stratosphere, where the air is thin, just as at the silky moment of falling in love.
