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.