CV

CONTACT

Galleri Weinberger Schandorff
Email: kontakt@galleri-ws.dk
Phone: +45 2989 4209
www.galleri-ws.dk

SHORT BIO

I grew up in the 70s on my grandparents farm in Denmark. My father was born and raised in Korea and my mother is Danish. Two gifted draughtspersons, my parents encouraged me to draw from an early age and my decision to become a painter was thus a natural one. My earliest artistic endeavors were the sketches I did from tv-shows, cartoons and art-history books in my childhood home in the Danish countryside.
I studied visual arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London in the mid-1990s, making my debut as a painter in Copenhagen in 2008.
Throughout my career I have initiated, arranged and participated in collaborations with other artists. These have included work in the theater and multi- and single channel video projects, screened at various venues and spaces in the United States, South America, Canada, Europe, South Africa and Australia.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I feel that if we want to know our history and look at the development of our culture the information provided by art and arts history is of the essence. I strive to create works of art, which are independent of me as an individual, yet, intimate and felt. I am particularly interested in monochromes. Eastern and Western art are culturally disparate; Western monochromes originally point out a reactionary response to the dominance of naturalism in fine arts in the 19th Century, while painters in Korea have sought access to spiritual equilibrium with nature through their monochromatic brush strokes. My bicultural heritage is reflected in my work.

GRANTS

2011 — Project Grant, The New York State Council on the Arts
2010 — Travel Grant, Danish Arts Foundation
2009 — Travel Grant, Danish Arts Foundation
1994 — Study Grant, City of Westminster, The London Borough

RESIDENCIES

2023 — Spitbite, 1 week, Printers Proof, Copenhagen
2020 — Monoprints, 3 weeks, Printers Proof, Copenhagen
2013 — Photogravure, 2 weeks, Crown Point Press, San Francisco, USA
2012-2011 — Aquatint, 7 weeks, Danish Art Workshops, Copenhagen
2011 — Audio/Visual Experimental Installation, 1 week, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY, USA
2010-2009 — Collaboration with Stringdance+Media, 4 weeks, Brooklyn, NY, USA
2009 — Aquatint, Hard Ground and Soft Ground, 2 weeks, Crown Point Press, San Francisco, USA
2006-2005 — Anatomy, 8 weeks, Panum Institute, Macroscopic Dept., Copenhagen

EXHIBITIONS

Selected Solo Shows
2022, Aug. 19–Sep. 24 — Graphite, Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen
2020, Nov. 14–29 — Colours Drawn from a Childhood, Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen
2016, Mar. 4–Apr. 16 — Life After Ninety, Galleri Weinberger, Copenhagen
*2011, Jun. 21–Aug. 20 — The Journeyman, Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen
*2010, Feb. 1–Apr. 30 — The Man Without Qualities, Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen

Selected International Group Shows
2023 — Artwork Orange, Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen, Denmark
2021 — Pop-Up Show: Konkret, Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Charlottenlund, Denmark
2020–2012 — The Postal-Collage Project, Ramon's Tailor & The Shuman Block, San Francisco/Berkeley, CA, USA
2016–2009 — Anonymous Drawings, Kunstraum Kreuzberg (DE), Kunstverein Rüsselsheim (DE), Galerie GEYSO20 (DE), ARTQ13 (IT), Galerie Nord (DE)
2015 — Pairings: Collaborative Works by Two or More Artists, Healdsburg Center for the Arts, CA, USA
*2012 — Infinity Loop and Images of Eggs (with Mette Ussing), Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen
2011 — Fragments, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY, USA
2010 — Stories of the Sun God, Triskelion Arts / Dance Entropy, New York, USA
2009 — The Vitruvian Woman, Velan Center for Contemporary Art, Torino, Italy
2009 — At the Zenith, Magacin Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
2009 — Water Preserves, DMA Gallery (Alfred) & State of the Art Gallery (Ithaca), NY, USA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

*Catalogs
2012 — Infinity Loop and Images of Eggs, ISBN 978-87-992964-6-0
2011 — The Journeyman, ISBN 978-87-992964-4-6
2009 — The Man Without Qualities, ISBN 978-87-992964-2-2
2008 — Monochromes and Short Wave Paintings, ISBN 978-87-992844-0-5
2008 — Four Grades of Reality, available at www.bibliotek.dk

Other Publications
Michael B. Chang (ed. Justina Joy Bartoli-Miller), A Collection of Essays on Art, Forlaget Uden Titel, 2008–2014, available at www.bibliotek.dk
Michael B. Chang, Interferens: Interaktion med Jens Jørgens Thorsens film "Lys" 1988, Forlaget Uden Titel ApS, Copenhagen, 2011, available at www.bibliotek.dk

SELECTED PRESS & REVIEWS

Trine Ross, Politiken.dk, Copenhagen, 2011 “Dansk krop overmaler Munch, Warhol og Bacon med sort” — A powerful and evocative take on the human form, showcasing a unique blend of tradition and contemporary expression.
Ray Finger, Star-Gazette, Elmira, NY, USA, 2011 “Fragments on Display at Arnot Museum” — A compelling presentation that challenges perceptions with layered narratives and experimental visuals.
Claudia Corrieri, ArtReview.com, London, 2010 “Exquisite Corpse Video Project: A Network First” — An innovative approach to collaborative video art that pushes boundaries and creates new dialogues.
Tita Nordlund-Hessler, Eskilstuna-Kuriren, Sweden, 2009 “Nu vill han göra bilder av tomrum” — Engaging with emptiness and form, the work invites viewers into a contemplative space between presence and absence.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Workshops, Talks, Art Fairs
2022, Aug. 22–28 — Enter Art Fair, c/o Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen
2022, May 6–8 — Art Herning, MCH Messecenter, Herning, Denmark
2020, Oct./Nov. — Paintings, drawings, and prints featured in Cry Wolf, (TV Series 2020), DR1 Drama (Danmarks Radio)
2015, Dec.–Jan. — The Journeyman (Revisited), featured artist, Kunstforeningen Det Kgl. Bibliotek, Copenhagen
2011, Oct. 14 — Culture Night Open Workshops, Danish Art Workshops, Copenhagen
2011, Apr. 7 — Artist Talk: Meeting in the Middle, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY, USA

Collaboration
2022-2009 — Marty McCutcheon (US), multiple long-term collaborations
2016–2014 — Kunstnerkollektivet Tietgensgade, initiator, co-founder, member
2014–2011 — Slowness (US), audio/visual and performance collaborations
2013–2012 — Kirstine Autzen (DK), exhibition and audio/visual collaborations
2011–2009 — Christy Walsh (US), scenographic and performative collaboration
Additional collaborations: Jan Kather (US), Melanie Chilianis (AU), Willy Darko & Irina Gabiani (IT), Stina Pehrsdotter & Niclas Hallberg (SE), Mette Ussing (DK)

VIDEO

Selected Documentaries (2008–2016)
Life After Ninety (2016), 7:13
Studio Visit I - III (2013), 23:4
Experiment with acetone printing and chine-colle (2012), 2:27
Infinity Loop (2012), 1:35
Images of Eggs Series (2011-2012), 32:20
Making a Print (2011), 3:48
Fragments (2011), 37:29
The Journeyman (2011), 1:6
The Man Without Qualities (2010), 6:10
Stories of the Sun God (2009), 10:00

Selected Audio/Visuel Works (2007-)
2025 — On Silence III: A Third Opinion — experimental short
2012 — Autzen+Chang — collaboration with Kirstine Autzen
2011 — Two Hands in the Air and One Hand in the Air — gesture-based performance works
2011 — No Manifesto — audio/visual manifesto exhibited across Europe and US
2011 — Little King and Black and White — collaboration with Slowness Band (US)
2010 — Y — long-form video essay, 1h 38m
2009 — In the Morning, Spinning, Transformation, Interfaces — short experimental works
2008 — On Silence — early video statement on visual minimalism
2008 — Concerto Azzurro and Espresso — gesture-based performance works
2007 — Pregnant — foundational short screened widely internationally

Selected Screenings
2014 — Y, Transborda – Overflow, Alcobaça, Portugal
2012 — No Manifesto, screened at ZET Foundation (Amsterdam), Galerie Octobre (Paris), Rich Mix (London), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), Box Space (Milan), Expressive Arts Institute (San Diego)
2010–2011 — Interfaces & Transformation, ECVP Vol. 2, shown at Videoformes (France), Optica (Paris), Blueprint (London), Experimenta! (Brazil)
2009 — Pregnant and Espresso, ECVP Vol. 1, featured at: Artists Television Access, San Francisco, USA / Indie Film Festival, Brazil / Alucine Festival, Toronto, Canada / Aza Digital Cinema Festival, Thessaloniki / Kulturpalast Wedding, Berlin, Germany / Sguardi Sonori Festival, Rome/Benevento, Italy / Optica Fest, Latin America (Buenos Aires, La Paz, Gijón)
2008 — Pregnant, Vansa Network, Cape Town, South Africa / Rural Research Labs, Elmira, NY, USA

SOLO SHOW Graphite 2022, Aug. 19–Sep. 24 Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen

2022, Aug. 19–Sep. 24 — Graphite, Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen. (Photo: Thomas Thorgaard Iversen).

Graphite

Exhibition text

MY VERY FIRST childhood sketches, I’m quite sure, were done with graphite. My love for drawing grew deep roots, and by my early twenties, I started working to become a painter. My early works were figurative, and my first attempts at oil painting were not even remotely successful. Not knowing any better, I began drawing with paint on large, (2x2m), prefabricated canvases. Naturally, the result was nothing like the paintings I had admired in museums. Today, the earnest ambition and inadvertently comic endeavours of my youth are something of which I have grown very fond.

I was a young adult when I realized that if I wanted to learn to paint properly, I would have to study painting techniques. Never in my wildest imaginations would I have thought that I would someday exhibit my work in Copenhagen in an art gallery like Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, renowned for exhibiting Minimalism, Concrete- and Abstract art. I still struggle with painting, but it’s different from when I didn’t know how to paint. The more I study art and learn about painting, the more of a challenge it is to make something of relevance. I use sketching as a tool for developing ideas. Years’ worth of sketchbooks have become a private archive documenting my progress.

In this exhibition, I have arranged pages from my sketchbooks as mobiles – a type of kinetic sculpture like those attributed to American sculptor Alexander Calder. Cutting my sketchbooks open and sharing my private archive is a way of showing how I work. My graphite and beeswax drawings are a reference to American painter Brice Marden. Bordering on painting, these drawings are technically challenging to execute, but more interestingly, they have changed the way I perceive drawing. In the show, I’m also exhibiting a group of monoprints, aquatint chine collé grids – and a group of paintings based on sketches made between 2016 and 2022. For me, these paintings mark a new beginning - just like my childhood sketches.

Michael

Gothersgade, Copenhagen, 2022

Links

Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, (Instagram)

Printers Proof, (Instagram)

Exhibition Video (42 sec./YouTube)

SOLO SHOW Colors Drawn from a Childhood 2020, Nov. 14–29 Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen

2020, Nov. 14–29 — Colours Drawn from a Childhood, Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, Copenhagen. (Photo: Thomas Thorgaard Iversen. Chair by MBADV Studio).

Colors Drawn from a Childhood

Catalogue Text
Trine Ross
Copenhagen, 2020

EVEN THOUGH FEW have read In Search of Lost Time, most people know that it is a madeleine cake that sends Proust on a journey through memory. And we all know the sensation: how a scent, a shaft of light, or a particular color can suddenly unfold memories we barely remembered having.

In his new series of copper prints, Michael Chang takes memory as his starting point. But whereas memories are fluid and often blurry at the edges, he has found an almost scientific method: isolating colors from old family photographs, removing them from their original context, and transferring these liberated colors into graphic works. Gone are the images themselves—a mother in the garden, a child in a cherry tree, or someone posing in a yellow rapeseed field. What remains is the feeling, the atmosphere, the essence of remembering itself.

But remembering is one thing. What we choose to carry with us is another.

Our memories are far more pliable and adaptable than we tend to believe. We constantly, and often unknowingly, reshape the past to better fit the present we want to inhabit. This becomes clear when we compare our memories of a given situation with those of others who were also present. Very often (and quite surprisingly), it turns out we remember the same situation completely differently.

Even photographs change over time—especially analog, physical ones that carry our past from before everything became digital. They deteriorate, their colors shift, and they become scratched from repeated handling. In Chang’s family, slides were used frequently—just like in many others. I can still recall the smell of the crackling canvas screen we viewed them on in my family. The sound of the slide projector clicking—ka-klonk!—as another image appeared, and we excitedly shared the experience with one another all over again, out loud.

This is how shared memories are created, how our recollections begin to align. And this is how we influence each other—just like colors do when they come close together. Artists have long explored this, but in the 19th century, color also became the subject of more scientific analysis. These theories inspired the Impressionists and especially the Pointillists later in the century. The interest carried into the 20th century, where movements like Orphism developed them further in a more abstract direction.

As early as the 1910s, Kazimir Malevich created what is likely the first fully monochrome painting, Black Square. And in the more than 100 years since, contemporary art has returned to this theme again and again. But these works are rarely purely single-colored surfaces. Barnett Newman, for example, added narrow stripes of contrasting primary colors to his vibrating reds in the four versions of Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue from the late 1960s. Still, it is likely Newman’s friend and colleague, Mark Rothko—with his horizontal bands of pulsating color—who stands as the most obvious artistic ancestor or inspiration for Chang’s latest series. But those are only superficial connections. Chang’s works have their own distinct purpose—positioned somewhere between American Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Eastern philosophy. Nothing less.

To support this, Chang has developed his own “art of limitations,” a set of rules or dogmas within which his works are created. All dimensions are based on his own body measurements, and another guiding principle is that he must only use colors already available to him. This is practical, pragmatic, cost-efficient, and ecologically responsible. But more than that, the rules eliminate a whole range of unnecessary choices and free Chang to focus on other aspects of making art.

A central focus is color—because when a work consists solely of color, color becomes crucial. Chang mixes his own hues from pigments, and over the years has built a library with records of mixing ratios and color samples. Yet, even though it may look like he has put everything into formulas, he constantly challenges himself as an artist. In this case, by choosing copperplate printing as a method—one that required him to collaborate with professional printmakers, rather than working alone as he usually does, and to translate his color library into graphic prints.

Both aspects turned out to be more successful than expected. But even if the tangible results—the prints—had failed, Chang would not have seen it as a failure. For him, it’s the process, and in this case also the conversations along the way, that matter most. And this "most important thing" is what the artworks, in a sense, stand as evidence of. A bit like memories—imprinted on our minds by events, but shaped like stones at the water’s edge by our ongoing imagination and interpretations: unique, interconnected, fragile like ourselves, and essential for our future.

Trine Ross

Master of Art History, art critic and writer at Politiken, lecturer, author, and (art) debater.

Links

Galleri Weinberger Schandorff, (Instagram)

Printers Proof, (Instagram)

MBADV Studio, (Instagram)

Trine Ross, (www.trineross.com)

SOLO SHOW Life After Ninety 2016, Mar. 4–Apr. 16 Galleri Weinberger, Copenhagen

2016, Mar. 4–Apr. 16 — Life After Ninety, Galleri Weinberger, Copenhagen. (Photo: Thomas Thorgaard Iversen).

Life After Ninety

Michael Baastrup Chang

LIFE AFTER NINETY is the title of a book I have on my shelf. And Life After Ninety is the title of my exhibition at Galleri Weinberger (2016). It’s been eight years since I bought that book, and the paradox in choosing the title is that I haven’t actually read it yet. But I think the title sparks some interesting thoughts.

While I work, I don’t think about anything in particular. I use systems as structure and invent rules that transform the images that emerge. The drawings in the exhibition are made with graphite on paper. They are based on sketches developed during the period 2009–2015. I’m also exhibiting a combination of drawing and painting. The materials used in these works are graphite, beeswax, linseed oil, and pigment on paper. In these pieces, it’s the processed areas that create the contours. The series is the result of oil-wax treatment of stretcher bars used for paintings. The paintings in the exhibition are almost like a landscape of rules—and a recording of the hand’s movement across the canvas. At the center of the works, the layered construction of the painting can be seen. The materials are pipe clay, chalk, slaked lime, pigment, and tempera on canvas.

I see painting as the final stop of my process. After that, I can begin again.

Gothersgade, February 26, 2016

Links

Livet efter halvfems (2016), 7 min. 13 sek. (VIDEO)

Galleri Weinberger, (Instagram)

Read about the process

Step 2 Video

Step 3 Video

Step 4 Video

Read a ChatGPT conversation

GROUP SHOW with
Mette Ussing (Sculpture) Infinity Loop and Images of Eggs 2012, May 7–June 30 Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen

2012 — Infinity Loop and Images of Eggs, Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen.

The Artist as Gardener

Catalogue Text
Trine Ross
Copenhagen, 2012

There is an old Chinese proverb that says: He who wants to be happy for a day, gets drunk. He who wants to be happy for a week, slaughters a pig. He who wants to be happy for a year, gets married. But he who wants to be happy for life, becomes a gardener.
And it is precisely the act of gardening that forms the core of Michael Chang’s practice. Though he is an artist, he nevertheless sees himself as a caring gardener, one who helps his growths along their way. Everything they need, and everything they will become, already lies latent in the seed. Thus, it is solely his task to give these seeds the best possible conditions for growth.
However, Chang's seeds are not planted in soil. Instead, they are hidden within the materials and the thought processes he uses to work on his pieces—both physically and mentally.

But it hasn’t always been this way: until 2007, Chang worked in a very different style, with different expressions and aims. Back then, it was about figuration, technical skill, and what is traditionally called talent. You could also call it mastery—and while an artist must know their materials, overt skill isn't always an advantage.
This led Chang’s artistic practice to take a significant turn—away from recognizable figures and, more importantly, toward an artistic approach centered on exploring painting, materials, and what they do to him and to us. Gone, too, is the hectic and contemporary demand for constant innovation, which has allowed him the peace to rediscover old techniques such as tempera. In doing so, something quite wondrous happens: a completely unforced renewal of visual language emerges. Because even though the technique is thousands of years old, we have never seen it used in the way Chang does.

On a technical level, Chang has also found his own paths, beginning with priming the raw canvas. For this, he uses slaked lime—that is, crushed bones from various animals that lived around Stevns Klint several million years ago. This, to put it mildly, historical foundation is built upon using eggs, which carry equally far-reaching philosophical, symbolic, and very practical meanings. For the egg, like the seed, is the beginning—carrying all of the future in a complete whole—while the whites bind and stick together, and the yolk's lecithin content makes oil and water blend harmoniously.
The technique requires patience. Though the first four layers of alternating lime and egg whites dry in a couple of days each, the tempera takes much longer to oxidize and bond with the surface. Tempera is a mixture of water, linseed oil, and egg yolks, with added selected pigments. To avoid cracking, the canvas must rest untouched for about seven weeks before a new layer of pigmented tempera can be applied.

The many layers that make up each work not only take time—they also yield a wealth of experience. Chang experiments with his brushstrokes, which, in his hands, become a material in themselves. Likewise, he explores his colors, often achieved by combining complementary colors that normally lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. Yet (or perhaps because of this), the result is harmonious, with great depth and subdued intensity in the colors. What emerges is a method that is investigative and almost intuitively scientific, where the artist's ego is no longer central. Instead, Chang makes room for the process, where the work functions on its own—and as a document of its own creation.

Naturally, things sometimes grow the wrong way. There were supposed to be fruits on the plant, but there aren’t, and so the gardener must intervene—must do something different than before, since what he has done so far clearly hasn’t worked. And in that, something new is learned. Other times, things succeed a little more easily—but even then, a work is not guaranteed survival. Occasionally, even well-functioning works must be sacrificed so that something new may sprout in their place. What that may be, and what it might become, Chang does not know—but he ensures clean water and good lighting.
This may lead to large tempera paintings that alternate between manifesting themselves in space and disappearing before your eyes. Or it may result in a series of copper prints that combine multi-generational recipes with eggs and accompanying children’s drawings. In truly exceptionally happy circumstances, Chang may even recognize his own growths in the works of other artists—as is the case with Mette Ussing. Here, a communication has arisen—not just between two artists from different generations and starting points, but also between their works, which seem to have grown in greenhouses that resemble one another. Together, these growth-works create a new hybrid—whose cuttings one can only look forward to following in the future.

Trine Ross

Master of Art History, art critic and writer at Politiken, lecturer, author, and (art) debater.

Links

2012 Infinity Loop and Images of Eggs, ISBN 978-87-992964-6-0 (Udstillingskatalog PDF)

Infinity Loop and Images of Eggs (2012), 1 min. 35 sek. (VIDEO)

Images of Eggs - Making a Print (2011), 12 min. 30 sek. (VIDEO)

Images of Eggs - Sanding down, mixing, coating (2011), 13 min. 56 sek. (VIDEO)

Michael B. Chang & Hans Manner-Jacobsen, Images of Eggs, podcast, 34 min. 8 sek., Copenhagen, 2011. (AUDIO)

Statens Værksteder for Kunst

SOLO SHOW The Journeyman 2011, June 21–August 20 Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen

2011, Jun. 21–Aug. 20 — The Journeyman, Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen . (Photo: Anne Mie Dreves).

Regarding The Journeyman

Catalog text
Melissa E. Feldman
Piedmont, California, 2011

Recently Michael Chang wrote about affinities in the work of an unlikely triad of artists--Damien Hirst, Bob Dylan, and Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II--proposing artmaking as a great equalizer between people, be they rich, poor, famous or obscure. He notes that the chances of us becoming colleagues outside the realm of painting are slim. Last year Dylan, who explains that If I could have expressed the same in a song, I would have written a song instead, came out as a painter with a show at the National Gallery of Denmark. While Hirsts blockbuster art epitomizes the late twentieth century artist, Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II exercises her passion for and considerable gifts in both ecclesiastical embroidery and landscape painting, her royal position notwithstanding. In the case of Dylan and the Her Majesty, artistic identity does not function in its usual elitist manner; on the contrary, has a normalizing, even humanizing, effect on how we view these untouchables.

The works comprising The Journeyman might be understood as extending the purview of Changs dialogue with artistic colleagues to include Francis Bacon, Paul Cezanne, Francisco Goya, Edvard Munch, Andy Warhol, as well as a few American minimalist painters encountered through the artists armchair and airplane travels. But before we get to them, lets talk about his other colleagues: all of you. You can qualify by adding your marks or words to Y (2010), a monumental, multi panel blackboard. Mine would say, why not? Using a blackboard as surface and support creates a role reversal in which the visitor/student becomes the artist/teacher, where touching and graffiti are allowed, confessions become public information, and the picture is always impermanent. Words and images are interchangeable, and the work is always both finished and unfinished. Accordingly, the scale and narrow proportions of the panels underscore the physical (as opposed to cognitive) action of markmaking. The height correspondences to the artists height and the width of each panel equals that of his extended arm from shoulder to finger tips. For Chang the piece represents a catharsis, a getting rid of words and thoughts, emptying myself and stop verbalizing everything.

The same can be said of Changs new monochrome paintings in homemade egg tempera whose satin surfaces show nairy a brush mark. The surface quality is the result of a labor-intensive process of sanding successive applications (at least three) of chalk and then egg white. If it werent for the ragged bottom edge revealing its layered history, the works would not appear to have been painted at all. Despite the mediums medieval origins, the egg temperas remind me of the perfect monochromatic fields that California Light and Space artists of the late sixties such as John McCracken and Robert Irwin producedfields that reflected Los Angeless clear skies as well as the flawless surfaces of their automobiles and surfboards.

In the works that comprise The Journeyman Chang opens up his practice to different kinds of processes and materials, both traditional--the egg temperas for example-- and newfangled. As in postminimalism, or so-called process art of the early 1970s exemplified by the work of such artists as Barry Le Va and Bruce Nauman, Changs new work walks a fine line between the intentionality of a set procedure and the physical limits of the operator (artist) and his materials. In the Appropriations (2011) Chang wrangled a large commercial printing pressfor what could be more intentional than a machine? Seeking to undermine the reproduction quality of images of works by Warhol, Munch, and Cezanne among a few others, he reprinted the same sheets (all 1168 of them) four times using corrosive liquid to corrupt the image. Paradoxically, the resulting splashing and dripping offset ink resembles running paint. Next Chang covered the image with hand-applied graphite and beeswax, further obscuring the image while at the same physically and symbolically embedding an artistic ancestry in the signature geometry of his work.

Printmaking is one of the principle ways Chang expresses his interest in elaborate technique and layered mediums and the ultimate mystery of their interaction. He embraces the vagaries of chance operations both in the studio and in life, where he assimilates people and opportunities that come his way. In the series entitled Folds, for example, Chang recuperates scraps of lovely Somerset paper leftover from the prints he made at San Franciscos reknowned Crown Point Press into a series of bas reliefs made by folding the paper, from six down to one time, and displaying them unfolded. Irregularly shaped with deckled or torn edges, some are a just a sliver at 1/2 by 12, reminiscent of an archeological fragment. The last reproduction in the catalogue is the single fold, Irregular Shape folded once, and as Chang pointed out, then you close the catalogue which is a little folding as well.

Melissa E. Feldman

Independent curator and writer.

Links

2011 The Journeyman, ISBN 978-87-992964-4-6 (Udstillingskatalog PDF)

The Journeyman (2011), 1 min. 6 sek. (VIDEO)

Michael B. Chang, Y, (2010), 7 min. 24 sek. (VIDEO)

SOLO SHOW The Man Without Qualities 2010, February 1–April 30 Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen

2010, Feb. 1–Apr. 30 — The Man Without Qualities, Cath Alexandrine Danneskiold-Samsøe Gallery, Copenhagen.

Everyman

Catalog text
Melissa E. Feldman
Piedmont, California, 2009

MICHAEL CHANG came into my life suddenly and vanished as quickly. We met last August (2009) when he was in San Francisco producing aquatints at Crown Point Press for this exhibition (The Man Without Qualities 2010). His timing was perfect, I was in town briefly between summer trips and was able to meet him the next day. (It's a good thing too, because the prints and the artist were shipping out in two days time to Copenhagen.) Arriving at Crown Point, a tall, dark-haired youngish man greeted me with an accent and a face I couldn't place. He spoke English with confidence and apart from his height, Chang didn't look particularly Scandinavian. He struck me as being a kind of everyman, someone who could fit in any where, be it Lhasa or Manhattan.

We chatted and I asked a lot of questions and studied the prints, all aquatints in a minimalist style. Two of the series were complete: A handsome group of aquatint and chine collé, 77 by 55 cm, that starts out all white and ends, seven prints later, with an all-violet impression, and a smaller oblong series of four whose main drama is a diminishing midline dividing its washes of gray-greens and bronze, some in a striped moir pattern befitting a Renaissance waistcoat. There was also an unfinished set of gridded variations on a squarish, book-size paper. This set was to be editioned; all the others are unique. Chang showed me a digital image of an ambitious, 15 by 6-foot multi-panel painting, The Man Without Qualities (2009), that would accompany the new aquatints. This imposing work, a tour de force from what I could tell, comprises eight vertical panels, all 54 by 185 cm except for the central bone white one which is a bit wider, and each painted a different muted red, green, yellow, purple and black. It resembles the American artist Brice Mardens classic minimalist works from the early 70s (also oil and wax), yet it is less formalist and studied. Changs shifts in color seem more naturally-occurring, an unforced sequencing that seems to mirror the shifting color of water under an overcast sky, or the way one thought leads or leaps to another. Chang explained the meticulous coding system involving the number of staples attaching the canvas to the stretcher and how he works on them flat and selects a different brush size and directional stroke for each one. Yet when asked why he named the work after the novel by Robert Musil [1] he said the title just seemed apropos though he had not read the book. By now I was beginning to grasp Michael Changs paradoxical approach: Order colliding with chance and intuition.

[1] Robert Musil (1880 - 1942) Austrian. Author of the (unfinished) modernist novel, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften.

It was completely by chance, for example, that he discovered the work of Brice Marden, one of the abstract American painters whose work was inspirational for him, and his first monochrome painting came about by accident. The monochrome stands as the ground zero of painting, a beginning and an end. That is how it went for Chang, when he made his first monochrome painting by inadvertently ruining his last and he says best figurative work. In Changs native Scandinavia, figurative traditions prevail over abstraction, both contemporary and historical, Chang himself made figurative work until two years ago (2007). Vaguely surrealist, these earlier paintings feature an isolated figure or object, such as two fish trapped in a glass jar, set in a tonal background of uncertain depth. Still Changs abstract work bears a Nordic sensibility that can be traced back to the late 19th century Scandinavian symbolists, whose most famous affiliate was Edvard Munch, in it's reductive formal means and sense of interiority. Unlike the brilliant palette and empirical realism of their French counterparts, the moodier modernists in the North opted for Whistleresque tonal and monochromatic color, and flat, shadowless light.

As a cultural mistizo with a Danish mother, an Asian father, and a British education, his attraction to the monochrome begins to make even more sense. The idiom encompasses ancient archetypes and Eastern zen, modern architecture and Western doubt. This mutability, perhaps, accounts for its remarkable resilience. Kazimir Malevich is responsible for its modern identity. Since then (1917) the monochrome has been adopted by artists working all over the world from the early Italian conceptualists Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana, to the heady meditations of Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, James Lee Byars, and Wolfgang Laib. It serves the deconstructivist investigations characteristic of Americans Robert Ryman and Ad Reinhardt. More recently, in the work of Glenn Ligon, Byron Kim and Alejandro Otero, the monochrome bears the inscription of identity politics. As a visual paradigm, it can be an image, a denial of imagery, a state of mind, an iconoclast.

After more than 12 years of unsuccessful attempts at trying to find a connection to the art I felt that I was supposed to be making, I left Denmark and visited the USA for the first time. [2] That was in 2007, before Changs interest in abstract painting took hold. Changs story recalls Agnes Martins rite of passage from abstract expressionism to her mature minimalist style: I painted for 20 years without painting a painting that I liked. [3] That is, until she got to New York and saw non-objective painting.

[2] Quoted from e-mail exchange between the artist and curator, September 2009. [3] Interview with Irving Sandler in Germano Celant, Agnes Martin: Paintings and Drawings 1977-91 (London: Serpentine Gallery, 1993), 13.

In the larger prints, Chang begins the series with lightness and darkness: A white image and a black one. The ones in between seem to build towards the symphonic finale, a bar code of irregular stripes comprising the colors black, white, gray, and violet isolated in the preceding prints. The white is actually an impression of the plate itself, including dirt and grease marks. The velvety bottomless black is the result of being bitten for two 50-minute sessions in an acid bath. The parameters of the printing process and visuality thus marked, the work moves into another basic measure of picture-making and seeing: dividing the plate equally between two blacks, whose difference is barely discernible, then two whites. Such subtle variations in tone are a specialty of aquatint. Then the violet makes its entrance in a cloudy monochrome.

The new works demonstrate the classic Minimalist penchant for subtle geometries that operate on a perceptual level, but Changs approach is more dramatic and free-associative. There is a baroque quality to the contrasting forms and divided surfaces, as well as in his use of scale and sequencing. There is a touch of romanticism in Changs color choice. (The artist likes to contemplate his work in different natural light, including moonlight.) For example in the print with the two blacks and the print with smaller green/gold striped pieces in the oblong series, the tonal change comes across spatially, as if in bas relief, as well as pictorially in terms of color, hue, and pattern. One needs to shift position to determine whether external lighting accounts for the flashing stripes and shifting blacks or if these differentiations occur within the image itself. As always, the answer is yes and no, in Michael Changs elusive, straight-forward art.

Melissa E. Feldman

Independent curator and writer

Links

2009 The Man Without Qualities and Symposium, ISBN 978-87-992964-2-2 (PDF)

The Man Without Qualities (2010), 6 min. 10 sek. (VIDEO)

Statens Kunstfond

COLLABORATION with
Christy Walsh (Story and Choreography) Stories of the Sun God Performance History: 2010, Triskelion's Collaborations in Dance Festival, Brooklyn, New York 2010, Valerie Green/ Dance Entropy, Long Island City, Queens, New York

Above: 2010, Stories of the Sun God, Valerie Green/ Dance Entropy, Long Island City, Queens, New York.

Synopsis

Christy Walshs dark, narrative fable follows a powerful and immortal sun god on his heedless quest for knowledge. Stories of the Sun God leads the audience through a mythological empire in which secrets are the currency of power. Indeed, the guarding of secrets is of great importance to the characters, who are birds, princesses, young men and an omnipotent sun god. Stories of the Sun God is a series of intertwining tales; seven golden birds that share a secret, the guarding of which becomes their own demise; a princess who upon her death becomes a lover of the sun god; a young man faced with a bluebirds riddle; the sun gods army, birds of prey who cause all manner of trouble until their disbandment & no human nor magical bird remains untouched by the brilliant but sadistic ruler, who is above all accountability. Drawing on ideas as old as Rome, the narrative is at once a meditation on the nature of power and the importance of information in any age.

Stories of the Sun God is about sex, love, deception, mortality, immortality and imperialism told in four acts in a poetic language which combines movement, sound and visual art.

Chapters

1. The Seven Golden Birds
2. The Birds of Prey and the Great Debacle
3. The Bird of Paradise
4. The Red Bird and the Poet
5. The Two Princesses
6. The Magical Bird
7. The Young Man and the Blue Bird
8. The Little Green Bird and the Princess
9. The Four Birds of Death
10. The Golden Bird and the Sun God
11. The Silver Bird

Acts

Act One: Diplomacy by the Sword
Act Two: The Princess and the Sun God
Act Three: The Poet's Revenge
Act Four: Immortality is Forever

Support

Supported with a travel grant from the The Danish Arts Foundation in 2010.
Supported with flags from LS-Flag.
Supported with free work/performance space and video recording from Green Space Studio.
Nancy Mehan Dance Studio
Stringdance+Media.

Cast and crew

Christy Walsh

Choreography and direction

Ryan Lawrence
Laura Sifuentez
Carey Moore
Christy Walsh

Performers

Gordon Olson

Lighting

J Pasquale Greco

Sound design

Selina Loper

Assistant

Michael Baastrup Chang

Visual artist

Links

2009 Recordings from Nancy Meehan Dance Company, Manhattan, New York and sketches in Copenhagen (VIDEO)

Michael B. Chang, One hand in the air, (2011), 3 min. 41 sek.

Michael B. Chang, Two hands in the air, (2011), 3 min. 4 sek.

Statens Kunstfond

COLLABORATION with
Niclas Hallberg, Stina Pehrsdotter, Willy Darko and Irina Gabiani The Vitruvian Woman Exhibition History: 2009, March 14–April 19, Formverk Art Zone, Eskilstuna 2009, December 14, Cinema Massimo, Torino 2009, December 14-23, Velan Gallery for Contemporary Art, Torino

2009 The Vitruvian Woman, world premiere installation, March 14 April 19, Formverk Art Zone, Eskilstuna. Installation by Niclas Hallberg (SE).

2009 The Vitruvian Woman, installation, December 14 - 23, Velan Gallery for Contemporary Art, Video Dia Loghi 2009 Video festival, Torino. Installation by Willy Darko (IT).

Synopsis

The Vitruvian Woman is a collaborative video art project initiated in 2009 and headed by Chang. In 2009, 34 artists collaborated in creating nine threads of video art following nine dogmas of the female body.

The Vitruvian Woman had its premiere screening in March, 2009 at Formverk Art Zone, an art and exhibition space in Sweden. Formwerk is run by the resident artists Stina Pehrsdotter and Niclas Hallberg. In December 2009, The Vitruvian Woman was part of the video art festival, Video Dia Loghi 2009, in Turin, Italy, curated by Willy Darko and Irina Gabiani.

Festival programme excerpt

The Vitruvian Woman is a multimedia sculpture created by 34 artists from around the world. Inspired by Leonardo da Vincis sketch; The Vitruvian Man, which idealises the classic proportions of the human body, in his case the male body, The Vitruvian Woman sets out to trace the multidimensionality of womanhood in a flow of five three-minute video sequences reflecting the nine bodily regions: the head, heart, stomach, sexual organ, right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg and feet.

This poetry of dismemberment screened on nine monitors draws on diverse chapters of female identity, from scenes of domestic life to the sensibilities of lingerie and lust. Allegories of the flesh and a male beaten to pulp add to the shaky image of female empowerment as it alternately pins its hope on Buddhist mantra and surrenders to the flux of collective consciousness.

- Kim Wyon, Genoa, Italy.

Participating artists

Credited alphabetically

Aditi Kulkarni, (India)
Alberto Guerreiro (Portugal)
Alexandra Buhl (Denmark)
Henrique Cartaxo (Brazil)
Alicia Felberbaum (United Kingdom)
Alison Williams (South Africa)
Ambuja Magaji (USA)
Anders Weberg (Sweden)
Anica Vucovik (Serbia)
Anthony Siarkiewicz (USA)
Arthur Tuoto (Brazil)
Brad Wise (USA)
Bruno Penteado (Brazil)
Christy Walsh (USA)
Dave Swensen (USA)
Debbie Douez (Canada)
Igor Amin (Brazil)
Irina Gabiani (Luxembourg)
Jan Kather (USA)
Joas Sebastian Nebe (Germany)
Joy Whalen (USA)
Kai Lossgott (South Africa)
Kika Nicolela (Brazil)
Melanie Chilianis (Australia)
Michael Chang (Denmark)
Niclas Hallberg (Sweden)
Per E Riksson (Sweden)
Renata Padovan (Brazil)
Ronee Hui (United Kingdom)
Stina Pehrsdotter (Sweden)
Simone Stoll (Germany)
Ulf Kristiansen (Norway)
Uma Ray (India)
Willy Darko (Italy)

Links

Vitruvian Woman, Left Leg, 2009 (YouTube)

Video Dia Loghi 2009 Video Festival (Programme PDF)

COLLABORATION with
Jan Kather and Marty McCutcheon Fragments Exhibition History: 2009, July 25, Berkeley Commonplace, Berkeley, California 2011, April 5–8, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira New York, New York

2009 Fragments, world premiere screening, July 25, Berkeley Commonplace, Berkeley, California.

2011 Fragments, installation, April 5-8, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira New York, New York.

Synopsis

The Fragments Project is a video collaboration project headed by Michael Chang (DK) and Marty McCutcheon (US). Chang initiated the project in 2009 when he invited fifteen artists to collaborate on three threads of video art while adhering to specific rules.

The Fragments Project had its premiere in July 2009 in Berkeley, California at the community screening center run by McCutcheon, Berkeley Commonplace. During the event, three threads of video were projected onto a screen composed of the white-washed fragments of broken objects. Junk! The premiere event featured music from the Californian band Slowness pre-release debut EP as well as live experimental video performances by visitors and members of the Commonplace Community.

In 2011 Chang and McCutcheon teamed up with Jan Kather (US) and on April 58, 2011, the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, New York hosted The Fragments Project as part of a museum series focusing on collaboration.

Support

The New York State Council on the Arts and The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.
The Arnot Art Museum, Elmira New York, USA.
Berkeley Commonplace Community Screening Center, Shattuck Avenue 2571, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Californian band Slowness, http://www.myspace.com/slownessmusic.

Participating artists 2009

Credited alphabetically

Aditi Kulkarni (India)
Alberto Guerreiro (Portugal)
Alicia Felberbaum (United Kingdom)
Alison Williams (South Africa)
Ambuja Magaji (India)
Anders Weberg (Sweden)
Brad Wise (United States)
Dave Swensen (United States)
Kika Nicolela (Brazil)
Marty McCutcheon (United States)
Mads Ljungdahl (Denmark)
Niclas Hallberg (Sweden)
Stina Pehrsdotter (Sweden)
Ulf Kristiansen (Norway)
48073 (Holland)

Participating artists 2011

Credited alphabetically

Adamo Macri (Canada)
Aditi Kulkarni (India)
Alberto Guerreiro (Portugal)
Alicia Felberbaum (United Kingdom)
Alison Williams (South Africa)
Antonio Pinto (France)
Assangni Kisito (Togo)
Brad Wise (USA)
Christine Heusner (USA)
Claus Collstrup (Denmark)
Cora De Lang (Argentina)
Dave Swensen (USA)
Doug Anderson (USA)
Germn Britch (Argentina)
Graham McDougal (Scotland)
Irina Gabiani (Luxembourg)
Joas-Sebastian Nebe (Germany)
Kai Lossgott (South Africa)
Larry Caveney (USA)
Ludovic Sauvage (France)
Melanie Chilianis (Australia)
Niclas Hallberg (Sweden)
Osvaldo Cibils (Italy)
Per Eriksson (Sweden)
Stina Pehrsdotter (Sweden)
Ulf Kristiansen (Norway)
Uma Ray (India)
Vigga Vangsgaard (Denmark)
Willy Darko (Italy)
48073 (Holland)

Links

2011 Fragments: An Ephemeral, International Video Installation at the Arnot Art Museum

2011 Fragments: Bending the rules

2011 Fragments: Meeting in the Middle

2011 Fragments: Remix of Fragments Footage

2011 Fragments: Collaboration in Action

2011 Alice Talks about Fragments, An Ephemeral, International Video Collaboration

2011 Bear Hug by Tom Oberg projected in the Fragments Installation

2009 Fragments Announcement Video, Chang & McCutcheon

2009 Fragments Thread One, 48073 (NL), Marty McCutcheon (US), Brad Wise (US), Alberto Guerreiro (PT), Aditi Kulkarni (IN)

2009 Fragments Thread Two, Alicia Felberbaum (UK), Mads Ljungdahl (DK), Ulf Kristiansen (NO), Anders Weberg (SE), Niclas Hallberg (SE)

EXCERPT from A Collection of Essays on Art by Michael Baastrup Chang, 2008-2014 Edited by Justina Joy Bartoli-Miller

On grids

Published: Østerbro, December 2, 2011

When I first began working with grids, I found that I had discovered a modality that was independent of imparting a specific message, and yet still allowed me to produce work that was very meaningful to me. What grids lack in societal critique and emotionally-charged subject matter, they recompensate for with their structure and their subconsious interplay, which makes them an interesting subject for reflection.

Grids are all around us. The grid plan (Hippodamian plan) has been implemented in urban planning for millenia, from ancient Greece and Pakistan to New York and Portland, Oregon. They are also relevant for the written language. Take ancient Egyptian scrolls and sarcophagus engravings, for instance, or the organization of written languages on a page. In my childrens art, I have witnessed the strength that a grid structure provides for the creation of beautiful mandalas (mandala comes from the Sanskrit word for disk), a sacred symbol which represents the universe in Buddhism and Hinduism. Grid systems support the digital age, representing high or low-resolution images on a computer screen.

Grids can also be used to analyze gestures in space. Take for example the movements of a body. A grid gently lifted up from the picture plane and transformed to a three-dimensional mesh that surrounds the body can provide lines to record the bodys gestures. Grids are thus linked to brushstrokes and their direction in space, to abstract expressionism and even performance art and dance: While I was working with Christy Walsh on Stories of the Sun God, I learned that grids are used as an invisible structure for ballet and modern dance to provide anchor points for a dancers movements.

Grids are of course a valuable tool for sketching. Each line generates the foundation for the next line and before you know it, there are endless variations of intersecting lines and spaces, often produced without even thinking. Getting accustomed to working with grids (not to mention to working without thinking) can release the picture plane, as well as new ways of working with it. Drawing with a grid might even be likened a study of the nature of a plane and its possibilities, its challenges and likely constructions. This type of work directs attention to the nature of edges as well as the nature of a planes proportions and even what the physical presence of the painting as an object in a space can be about.

One of the central considerations of a painter is how the layers of a painting are constructed and how the plane reads visually, physically, sensually and conceptually. Since ancient times grids have been used to lay the foundation for compositions, and grids inspire mathematical compositions allied with sequencing and scale.

The fine arts are concerned with the definition, occupation, division and control of space. Grids are both two- and three-dimensional and can define cubes as well as planes, playing with the concept of where a work of art begins and ends. For example, a grid space can be created using as little as a string as a boundary and the result declared a sculpture of air. This conceptual work of art presents the viewer with a conundrum: is the string part of the work or not? Is it inside or outside the sculpture of air? Is the string itself the work of art, or merely a delineation?

So grids are not only powerful tools for the production of art but potent expressions in their own right. When I visited the ABEX exhibition at the MoMA in October, 2010, I encountered a painting by Robert Motherwell from 1941 entitled The Little Spanish Prison. The Little Spanish Prison was a divergence from the other Motherwell paintings on exhibit, as well as a departure from Motherwells signature black vertical and oval shapes against a white backdrop: it features instead six white and six yellow vertical stripes, several of which are linked together on the top left hand side by a short, horizontal red rectangle.

Both stripes and grids use lines, but their claim on space is different. In the visual arts, both stripes and grids serve as tools to mathematically define space and generate images. In a way, grids divide space, while stripes occupy space with their frequency. In The Little Spanish Prison, Motherwell achieved both effects by intersecting his twelve vertical stripes with a horizontal red rectangle on the top left hand side.

I remember suggesting to Jan [Kather], with whom I visited the exhibition, that the painting was more about Motherwells personal development as a painter than anything else; that it was a steppingstone as well as an arrival. I later read an exchange between Motherwell and Paul Cummings about that very painting that supported my suspicion. Cummings remarked that The Little Spanish Prison seemed to have been a key picture, and Motherwell replied that the painting had hit something that is deep in [his] character – But what it is I don't know. What it stands for I don't know. [1]

[1] Paul Cummings, interview with Robert Motherwell, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 24 November 1971, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.

The Little Spanish Prison did indeed refer to actual events, as I later learned, but the painting is as much about formal means in visual art as it is Motherwells experiences with the law enforcement of Francos fascist regime, his emotions and his personal growth as an artist. Despite its apparent simplicity, the grid painting can be about anything we bring to it and if we want, even more.

Grids are also inexorably linked to Albrecht Dürer, whose perspective device made out of wire strung in a frame was essentially a portable grid that aided him in capturing a plausible perspective of any type of scenery.

Contemporary artists still use grids to capture perspective, and they dont stop there. Post-modernist Dürers investigate the perspective device itself as subject matter, directing attention to the structure/grid while the scenery beyond it remains coolly encapsulated in mesh.

Grids are of almost infinite potential and much more can be said about them. They are like skeletons, inviting us to rearrange their bones and hang flesh on them as we wish. The opportunities inherited in the grid are infinite, as the grid itself.

Links

Paul Cummings, interview with Robert Motherwell, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 24 November 1971, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.

Steven Pinker and Stephen M. Kosslyn, "The Representation and Manipulation of Three-Dimensional Space in Mental Images", Journal of Mental Imagery, 1978, 2, 69-84, Harvard University. Link

Patricia Railing, From science to systems of art : on Russian abstract art and language 1910/1920, and other essays, Artists Bookworks, cop. 1989, ISBN: 09463 110 56. http://www.bibliotek.dk