Maria Chang

Maria Chang (b. 1981) is an artist characterized by her thick matière on canvas, continuously varying her own style with the new subject and materials to explore the language of the artwork. Her early paintings, “Man” series, are generally composed of supernatural and heroic characters who protect what is considered precious. The expressionless face as being covered with a mask, thick and cartoon-like outlines, and the extravagantly made body, which has a planar property, appear in these early series, categorizing her work into pop-art. Since 2015, however, she has tried to change the style through the portrait series, “Gray is the New Black”, made by limewashing after painting and scraping it with sharp tools. No specific figuration is clearly defined on canvas akin to the past, but only a few shapes—eyes, nose, and mouth—remain on it. Chang moves her style from figurative to abstract art using her series works; she eventually includes the process of looking into her microcosm. The artist is recently going forward from the portrait series and shows her new series, “In Between”—created by materials such as plaster and sand, bringing out the volume of grid-shaped works—and “Spring Series”—showing drastically applied colors concealed beneath the plaster. The traces left are not captured on canvas as geometrics, but they are expressed as a form getting out of the canvas. In addition, she makes a painting close to sculpture with its materiality maximized, exploiting tools used for the mechanical or sculptural purpose; not usual tools for painting, and finally founds a picture in between painting and sculpture.