2024 Westbund "The Golden Age" Solo Exhibition
From November 7th to November 10, 2024, artist Irene Chang's solo exhibition "The Golden Age" is prominently featured at Hall B325 of the Shanghai West Bund Art & Design Fair. This exhibition, presented in collaboration with Artrue Gallery, proudly showcases over 10 of Irene’s latest paintings created in 2024, including: "The Golden Age," "Burst of Joy," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Joy," and "Untitled." In her second appearance at the Shanghai West Bund Art & Design Fair, artist Irene Chang reflects on her recent creative journey, engaging in a dialogue between artistic creation and life philosophy.
Irene Chang has lived in cities such as Taipei, Hong Kong, New York, and Paris. Benefiting from the energy and cultural nourishment of these different lands, her work presents diverse artistic facets. However, she holds a special fondness for Shanghai, where she lived for fifteen years. Looking back on her life and creative journey, Shanghai represents a crucial milestone. This City not only opened a new chapter in her artistic creation, but also made her realize that the evolution of her work is closely connected to the pulse of this City, hence naming this solo exhibition "The Golden Age."
Irene Chang's oil painting process involves an exploration of the essence of painting and a reflection on life. Her evolving works are inseparable from her daily contemplation of these core questions. She excels at drawing inspiration from both Eastern and Western art history, with nature and life serving as her nourishment. Through variations in color, texture, and brushstrokes, she captures the spiritual resonance pursued in traditional Chinese painting. For Irene Chang, painting is a tool to translate language through visual representation, directly presenting her contact with and perception of the world, as well as serving as a direct expression of her inner emotions.
Irene Chang is widely learned and deeply contemplative, while maintaining a grounded mindset. Bamboo, which "heals life and soul," serves as the core visual element in this series; bamboo's humble and low-key nature and its endless vitality, represents the harmonious coexistence with nature, emphasizing the resilience to adapt to changes and the wisdom to respond flexibly. Endless brushstrokes depict bamboo forests, fruits, birds, chirping insects, and distant landscapes. These elements from reality are transformed into carriers and mediums of stories, reconnecting the self, the city, and the world.
"The Golden Age" Marks a Turning Point in Creation
"The Golden Age" refers to beautiful times, the brilliant and colorful people, events, and memories. Beautiful moments appear in different stages of life; when remembered, they remain precious and one can make feel extremely nostalgic. Irene Chang uses gold to paint the delicate spirit of bamboo, with the bamboo forest composition clearly visible in the distance, while her use of color and ink breaks from traditional Chinese gongbi painting conventions.
Starting with "The Golden Age" series in 2024, Irene Chang's painting approach underwent a change. "The Golden Age" presents bamboo forests in striking "flowing gold," depicting beautiful traces of memory. The works carry a misty atmosphere, seeming both real and illusory, yet remaining full of vitality. Irene Chang hopes that viewers will experience both surprise and relaxation in appreciating her work, joining her in letting go and enjoying the creative process.
Upon close observation of this work, one can see the magical fusion between traditional gongbi bamboo leaves and freely splashed oil colors, while hidden birds within give the painting a vibrant, free spirit. Uninhibited expressionism and delicate gongbi techniques alternate within the same canvas, making the details not immediately apparent. These paintings blur the boundaries between abstraction and gongbi style, seemingly incorporating various possibilities of life, like unpredictable gifts that life brings. The singing postures of birds enhance the work's vitality, presenting a harmony of both movement and stillness, which is Irene Chang's unique style formed through long-term immersion in diverse cultures.
For over a decade, after traveling the world, Irene chose to settle in Shanghai. For a painter's creation, travel truly provides what Liu Xie described as "the inspiration of natural landscapes." Having seen magnificent landscapes, she ultimately developed a mysterious connection with this City's scenery, and new inspiration emerged here. "The Golden Age" series reflects Shanghai's rich and diverse colorful life circumstances. Some say they see both acceptance and change in women's transitional mindsets; others see the artist's soaring philosophical thoughts and extensive knowledge; others observe her brush's sensitive awareness.
Irene herself says that reflecting on her time living in Shanghai, the years enriched her emotions, all worth painting into beautiful memories. She firmly believes that Shanghai's prosperity and her creative work are symbiotically connected, rising and falling with the waves. Her creation seems to confide in tacit partners during these years: including life-changing encounters in this City, approaching difficulties, vigorous climbing, the pleasure of success, and daily beauty. There is the belief that every viewer will find his or her answer in the flowing, jumping, extending, and spreading happiness in "The Golden Age", both being overwhelming and ineffable. " I send this painted love letter to Shanghai of this era."
"Joy": Finding the "Connection Points" between Life and Creation
Since "The Golden Age" series, Irene Chang's works have shown the light-hearted joy of her relaxed state of mind, displaying both unbridled passion and contained tranquility. Through the "Joy" series, she hopes to express the pleasure and happiness of birds in a bamboo forest. The canvas resembles a jungle party, with pink, red, blue, and purple fruits artfully scattered throughout, while various birds happily weave between them in different poses, some perched on branches, others soaring through the air.
How many adorable birds are there in the painting? The artist, with her pure heart and elegant playfulness, has hidden artistic Easter eggs in every corner of the canvas. As viewers visit this garden of artistic thought, exotic flowers and plants bloom in competition, with sparks of inspiration in every breath, unfolding a magical journey.
Musician and poet Rick Rubin wrote in "The Creative Act: A Way of Being": "We typically view an artist's work as their output. But an artist's true work is a way of being in this world." Irene Chang's creative process truly embodies this statement. The pink background and bamboo forest employ previous techniques, waiting for each layer to dry before applying the next, creating depth through this repeated process that requires a considerable amount of time. For her, this is like daily practice in life. "I put my time into it. I capture in my paintings the emotions and experiences I've accumulated over several weeks. The images are very real, authentically capturing the bits and pieces of my life."
"Burst of Joy," the layered paint seems to mirror life's daily minutiae, with repetitive, monotonous lines and brushstrokes jointly constructing an overall life scene. This work is deeply human and therapeutically comforting. Irene Chang believes in having the ability and patience to let the painting express itself.
She says: "I continuously destroy and then create, then destroy again and create again. I saw bamboo forests like those in traditional Chinese landscape paintings, 'placed' them using gongbi techniques, then completely destroyed everything again and again with splashed colors." Through these repeated layering actions, she unfolds her inner landscape, transforming it into "landscapes" that everyone can feel.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream": The Interweaving of Greenness and Dreams
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" series is a continuation of her "The Golden Age" creation. The series draws inspiration from Shakespeare's classic comedy, which playfully explores the complexity of love and human nature's humor through love, dreams, and dream interpretation. In the lower left corner of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," one can faintly see several small birds attracted by sweet and juicy grapes. They are busy foraging among the bountiful fruit trees, while multi-layered greens display jade-like deep vitality, evoking viewers' beautiful imagination of summer nights.
From previously depicting tranquil bamboo forests to now, her paintings burst forth with enthusiasm, causing viewers to pause and imagine, experiencing the hidden stories within the paintings with their hearts. Like on that midsummer night, she puts down work, slowly walking into the forest, pushing aside branches that block one's view. The various bamboo forests can support the artist's state of mind, creating a peaceful space for one's soul. Reducing complexity, adding space to breathe, everything returns to its essence, focusing more on the original inner appearance.
Following "The Golden Age" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "A Midsummer Night's Aria" is another love-filled series by Irene Chang. Inspired by her daughter's love for blue, she incorporated various blue tones in her creation, from deep indigo to elegant sky blue to harmonious azure, interwoven in the moonlit bamboo forest, as if capturing subtle color changes through the refraction of eyes.
In balancing family, career, and artistic creation, Irene has found her most suitable state, "focusing on the present" and presenting her best level possible within limited time. Her works, combining spirituality and imagination, are also her "translation" of the real world. As she describes: "I am sometimes passionate and unrestrained, sometimes quiet and reserved. I enjoy spending time with family and friends, and also cherish the tranquility of creating alone." In the deep blue background, birds sing in the forest. The expression, both stable and emotional, seems contradictory yet achieves a certain harmony in her works.
Photos by Irene Chang Studio
