Exhibition: Into the Heart-Mind of Tang Chang

Description

Curated by historian Sheryl Gwee, Tang Chang: Into the Heart-Mind at gdm Hong Kong presents the late, pioneering Thai artist’s (1934–1990) first solo exhibition in Greater China. Born into a working-class Chinese immigrant family in Bangkok, Chang was a self-taught artist who diverged from the mainstream of Thai modern art to develop a distinctive, idiosyncratic personal idiom.

The exhibition reflects on the artist’s iridescent visions of being, both in the world and in existence. Organised into four themes — True Forms, Writing the Cosmos, Wilderness Colours and Living Traces — it situates Chang’s radical oeuvre within the intertwined legacies of poetry, painting and philosophy.

Works on view include monochromatic ink studies that distil riverscapes into calligraphic gestures, fluorescent fields where verve and vitality bleed through layered washes of colour and dragged fingerprints, and cosmic compositions where the order of heaven and the order of the heart become one.