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.
Autobiographical information always serves as the basis for narrative exploration in Chang’s work. Recent projects such as Arrival Reception, and Welcome Door Mat, shows the way he idiosyncratically combines architecture, furniture, and text to focus on the notion of transient identity in a space where the public and the private intersect, such as a place between his bedroom door. Collectively, though, his work examines the interplay and relationship between ‘The Clean’, which is a quiet, orderly state, and ‘The Generic’, which is an empty state that is devoid of ego and memory.
Double Dream Hotel is an ongoing project that includes photographs, collages, sketches, and paintings during Owner’s Cabin residency in the month of July. For the duration of the residency the artist resided on an oil tanker traveling from Italy to the Netherlands. The project looks at scale, dimensionality, and lucid dreaming.
"I want to articulate the process of transitioning from one place to another. More specifically, transition between scales. Living on the ship one is locked to three distinct scales: the cabin, the vessel, and the sea. I want to use the passenger as the central figure and as the metaphor...who is constantly overwhelmed by slippages between dimensions. Somehow in the end, the residue becomes a multitude of comedic moments. Questions surfaced while I started to put these images together: does the process of compression and dilation yield some sort of cartoon? And, does compounding these cartoons lead to complexity? Isn't it just a strange and roundabout way back to...reality?"
Over the years, Chang’s work has produced varying effects and receptions. While it has been received with humour, other times it is poignant, or even self-righteous in its own prerogative. His portfolio has gone on public display in prominent art spaces such as the Chan Hampe Galleries, Gillman Barracks, Peninsular, Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore, Esplanade’s Jendela, Post-Museum, Sculpture Square, Art Stage Singapore, and Yeo Workshop in Singapore since 2011.
Vessel:
Cielo di Guangzhou - Oil Tanker - 49,990 tons DWT- 174 metres Length Overall
Load Port: Sarroch, Sardinia - July 9th, 2018
Load Port: Sines, Portugal - July 13th, 2018
Discharge Port: Ghent, Belgium - July 18th, 2018
Load Port: Rotterdam, The Netherlands - July 22nd, 2018
Cargo: Naphtha
Total time at sea: 13 days
