127. CHANG LING: A SPACE BETWEEN MEMORY AND PROPHECY.
Don Gallery, Freize London.
If My Hometown - Plantain Garden 假如故乡-芭蕉园, CHANG Ling 常陵, 2025. Oil on canvas 布面油画, 162 × 130.8 cm.
‘Unlike the overt expressiveness often found in Western traditions, this seemingly vanishing way of seeing allows the viewer to quietly dissolve into the work through space and light to become, ever so faintly, part of the indistinct crowd.’ L.C.
Seeing your paintings during Frieze London, I was drawn to your paintings which evoked a very specific depth of energy. Directly evoking a link back to the traditions of scroll paintings… Please can you contemplate the works as a series?
‘If My Hometown’ is a body of work I began in 2024. The abstraction of hometown lies within the collective consciousness of each act of looking back. In this new era of AI, the power to compose historical memory and future prophecy is gradually slipping from our hands. ‘If My Hometown’ was born out of this sense of crisis, focusing on the dual immersion—and entanglement—of sovereign consciousness. Can a blurred consciousness still perceive the traces of life we once had?
Your application of colour is arresting, drenched and alive, the sense on seeing the series was radical as the paint still appeared to be wet - not yet fixed... Please can you expand on your reading of time within the creation of this series?
I remember being born in Hualien, Taiwan — a place near the Pacific Ocean filled with banana trees, often the first coastline struck by the warm winds of summer typhoons. No — perhaps I think I remember. Or maybe I was born in Tamsui, a small fishing town in the north. I should ask my elders, or look through childhood photographs. But what if all of that no longer exists...If this is the dual immersion (and dual disorientation) of sovereign consciousness regarding the past and future...
Half hidden within the paintings are tiny scenes which suggest human groups, immediately this tension and dialogue to the community felt important. Please can you expand upon this narrative and symbolism within your practice?
As you’ve observed, I am deeply drawn to subtle, almost elusive modes of depiction. Unlike the overt expressiveness often found in Western traditions, this seemingly vanishing way of seeing allows the viewer to quietly dissolve into the work—through space and light—to become, ever so faintly, part of the indistinct crowd.
I thought as I looked closely into your series of landscapes, how interesting the brush work is, how the paint is applied to the surface and is also pulled away, as a brush that sweeps. Please can you explore your use of implements within your practice, and do you have specific tools which you rely upon?
I have a stand for my tools — it rises like a small mountain, piled with sticky paint, cloth, dried brushes, and others soaking in linseed oil. The air is thick with all kinds of scents. Within about 1.5 meters of reach, everything becomes an intuitive tool at hand. Sometimes there’s no time to select carefully; I simply spread the paint with my hands.
The placement and selection of works presented by Don Gallery at Frieze London were very strong this year. The link to other artists was very well considered and highly sensitive, which added such a tension to the experience of viewing the works... which artists are you drawn to and what do you learn from them?
Don Gallery represents an exceptional group of artists, and I’m honored to exhibit alongside them. I’m particularly drawn to ZHANG Yunyao’s work, with its striking contrasts and cool tonalities, and I also deeply admire ZHANG Ruyi’s pieces — the layered, accumulated cacti are simply mesmerising. She will be presenting her work at this year’s Taipei Biennial.
CHANG Ling, Don Gallery, Frieze London, October 2025.
With thanks to Silvia Sun at Don Gallery.