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Joy Chang | Silver Linings

Joy Chang | Silver Linings

Silver Linings is Joy Chang’s forth solo exhibition in Auckland. Chang’s work is very much informed by the environments she moves through – since graduating from Elam in 2010 and Slade School of Art (London) in 2013 – Joy has divided her time, living, working and exhibiting across three continents: Europe, Asia and New Zealand.

Chang’s works explores the shifting boundaries of cultural identity and the role of the individual against the back drop of globalisation and ever increasing virtual spaces. Rather than examining the real-life effects of time and place, Chang’s abstracted landscapes create worlds which cannot be tied to any particular temporal or physical environment – emphasising openness to the viewers interpretation.

Chang absorbs and isolates pockets of colour, form and texture for use as source material. From these basic building blocks she begins to construct possible worlds. The process begins with basic geometric shapes and prismatic forms which are then repeated, distorted and extended across the surface, with each new shape informing the next. Through this process of building, erasing and adding Chang explores relationships between colour, form and space and the individuals relationship to the whole.

Some these new paintings feature traditional Taiwanese Hakka and Paper Boats which are often hidden or aborsbed with in the work – suggesting unknown possibilities and optimism from the familiar. The writer Alain de Botton noted in his book, The Art of Travel: “The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” but this is also true of local evniroments and ‘the familiar’ – which re-examined can become exoitic, sublime and even un-familiar.