Chang's visual journey: Asia in watercolors
Chang's visual journey: Asia in watercolors
By Reita I. Malaon
JAKARTA (JP): Born in the small town of Terengganu in
Malaysia, the artist Chang Fee Ming is now known as one of Asia's
finest watercolorists. In the beginning, he painted the life of
the Malay villagers among whom he lived.
His paintings of colorful batik sarongs hanging in the wind
and fragments of scenes showing the motifs and textures of the
villagers clothes brought him early fame.
His works have been exhibited and collected throughout the
world. He has received a number of international awards such as
the Rockport Publisher's Award of Distinction (USA), and
more recently, one of his works, The Year 2000, So What? was
selected by Winsor & Newton for the United Nations' Millennium
Art Exhibition in London, Stockholm and New York.
Yet, Fee Ming seems to be more interested in traveling rather
than awards. He took himself off to explore the whole of Asia,
looking for new challenges. The Visible Trail of Chang Fee
Ming (Teratai Arts and Crafts, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia, 2000),
tracks the artist's travels, starting from his home town in
Terengganu, followed by his travels to Myanmar, Bali and other
parts of Asia.
Fee Ming's orchestration of vibrant colors and light, as well
as his meticulous rendition of texture is what fetches the
admiration of his audience.
In his most striking works, Chang Fee Ming features fragments
of scenes. In A Last Puff, 1999, for example, he only shows the
hands of a man crossed behind his back. The subject is wearing a
loose, wrinkled, linen shirt, with a bright-colored sarong tied
at his waist.
Although only a fragment of the figure, the backside of his
body from his lower arm to his thighs, and parts of a boat and
the water in front of him are visible, the subject's
hands holding a lit kretek clove cigarette immediately draw the
viewers' attention beyond what is visible, taking them into the
man's view, thoughts and emotions. The artist digs into the
psychology of his subjects, paying great attention to gestures
and body language. In essence, he tries to convey what is
invisible in the scene, tightly cropped to such an extent that
the main event, which the artist is supposedly representing, is
not depicted in the picture. Instead, the artist portrays
interesting fragments of spectators and bystanders.
Fee Ming's attention to detail when depicting the motifs and
textures of batik sarongs, as can be seen in Friday Market, 1996,
is not merely the result of interest in their decorative
qualities. The laborious process of meticulous rendering seems
akin to the meditative quest, rooted in Buddhism, for
impermanence.
His attention to the activities of the Bhikkus of Myanmar is
no coincidence. The artist's paintings, for example Fields of
Gold, 1994, are in many ways attempts to immortalize the ever-
changing; the more meticulous the detail, the more immortal the
image may seem. His fragments appear to reflect his struggle
in capturing the impermanent, ever-changing element of time.
Art observer Amir Sidharta notes that through his artworks,
Chang Fee Ming offers the impossible: he presents fragments of
the invisible and impermanent. Ironically, the more
of the invisible he can show and the more of the impermanent
he can capture, the more successful and striking his works
become.
The Visible Trail retraces Chang Fee Ming's continued search
for his art and his fascination with the journey of discovery and
wonder in the ever-changing life of man. The exhibition will run
until Feb. 24, 2001.