Notes
1 Threshold Index 1
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, ink on arches paper.
2 Threshold Index 4
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, salt, photocopy transfer collage, washi tape and pastel on arches paper.
3 Threshold Index 2
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, photocopy transfer and graphite on arches paper.
4 Threshold Index 6
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, pencil crayon and graphite on arches paper.
5Threshold Index 5
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, ink and graphite on arches paper.
6 Threshold Index 3
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour and graphite on arches paper.
7It’s Friday and I’m Ready to SwingShea Chang, 2020.
48” x 48”, acrylic on wood panel.
Like a limestone cave formed over time through contact with acidic water, my artistic practice is activated through the dissolution of boundaries in media, and in means of depiction.
Grottoes have a history of being co-opted spaces of devotion, reverence and transcendence, but are also at times associated with hidden debauchery and decadence, even adorned by the ubiquitous, kitschy seashell. In these follies, a mutation occurs between what is made by natural processes and what is mimicked or faked in construction. This definition of folly is analogous to the contemporary painting practice of coalescing the virtually constructed world with the physical through a brazenly baroque combination of ornament and illusion.
Like a collection of shells and strewn plastic caught in the tide of a watery cave, this interchange of elements and forces is made visible in my work through the entanglement of materials, techniques, and artistic strategies. Through engagement with chance and systems of control, I generate visual worlds through processes of mimicry, mutation, delineation and dissolution, cultivating an uncanny amalgamation between the optical, physical and the material.
I engage in drawing and painting through this differential play of delineating and dissolving forms, light and shadows through an improvisational and intuitive process. Masking techniques provide sharp, initial parameters that later become blurred, interrupted or erased. Wet-on-wet, porous applications of paint are extended on skin-like absorbent ground, revealing a permeable painted record of the traces and stains of its own environmental becoming.
Through an interplay between graphic and immersive approaches to depiction, the performative lexicon in my work functions to create context around imagined propositions; at its core, A Troubling, Soft Underfoot is about world building from an others’perspective. The smaller works can be viewed as indexes of speculative objects, where the larger, more physically immersive pieces can be perceived as spaces that are affected by these objects, or perhaps even created by these objects themselves.
1 Threshold Index 1
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, ink on arches paper.
2 Threshold Index 4
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, salt, photocopy transfer collage, washi tape and pastel on arches paper.
3 Threshold Index 2
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, photocopy transfer and graphite on arches paper.
4 Threshold Index 6
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, pencil crayon and graphite on arches paper.
5Threshold Index 5
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour, ink and graphite on arches paper.
6 Threshold Index 3
Shea Chang, 2020.
8” x 10”, mixed media drawing, watercolour and graphite on arches paper.
7It’s Friday and I’m Ready to SwingShea Chang, 2020.
48” x 48”, acrylic on wood panel.
Like a limestone cave formed over time through contact with acidic water, my artistic practice is activated through the dissolution of boundaries in media, and in means of depiction.
Grottoes have a history of being co-opted spaces of devotion, reverence and transcendence, but are also at times associated with hidden debauchery and decadence, even adorned by the ubiquitous, kitschy seashell. In these follies, a mutation occurs between what is made by natural processes and what is mimicked or faked in construction. This definition of folly is analogous to the contemporary painting practice of coalescing the virtually constructed world with the physical through a brazenly baroque combination of ornament and illusion.
Like a collection of shells and strewn plastic caught in the tide of a watery cave, this interchange of elements and forces is made visible in my work through the entanglement of materials, techniques, and artistic strategies. Through engagement with chance and systems of control, I generate visual worlds through processes of mimicry, mutation, delineation and dissolution, cultivating an uncanny amalgamation between the optical, physical and the material.
I engage in drawing and painting through this differential play of delineating and dissolving forms, light and shadows through an improvisational and intuitive process. Masking techniques provide sharp, initial parameters that later become blurred, interrupted or erased. Wet-on-wet, porous applications of paint are extended on skin-like absorbent ground, revealing a permeable painted record of the traces and stains of its own environmental becoming.
Through an interplay between graphic and immersive approaches to depiction, the performative lexicon in my work functions to create context around imagined propositions; at its core, A Troubling, Soft Underfoot is about world building from an others’perspective. The smaller works can be viewed as indexes of speculative objects, where the larger, more physically immersive pieces can be perceived as spaces that are affected by these objects, or perhaps even created by these objects themselves.
The Grotto as a Folly: Permeable Thresholds Between Visual Vernaculars
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