Acrylic on canvas

200 x 200 cm. 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in.

Signed in Pinyin and dated on bottom of the frame
PROVENANCE
Humble House Gallery, Taipei
Private Collection, Asia

Come to The Wonderland, We Hold Our Hands
Chang Chia-Ying's Dream to Live a Recluse Life

Chang Chia-Ying started her art education in an early age, and graduated from the oil painting branch of Taipei National University of the Arts in 2005. In the same year, she was invited to join an exhibition in the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which inspired our young artist. Then she studied in the Tainan National University of The Arts, Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts, and solidified her painting skills. After graduated in 2008, she held solo exhibitions in the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Gwangju Museum of Art, and other places, acting as an exemplary representative of the new century. She initiated her Wizard of Oz series in 2007, and opened a new chapter of the combination of wonderland and flat-aesthetics. This time we bring an excellent work of them, Wizard of Oz —— Tin Woodman on the stage.

“I dream every night. Those dreams are rather messy, discontinuous, even connected. Sometimes, I find it really hard to differentiate the reality and a dream.”
——Chang Chia-Ying

Chang always prepares a notebook at hand, to catch the fragments of her dream. The long time accumulation turns to be her “personal album”, inspiring her creation. The protagonist of the Wizard of Oz —— Tin Woodman, a girl with big eyes also originated from this. She poses calmly and smiles like the Mona Lisa, gentle yet hard to understand. Her head seems to be plied into the “Tin Woodman” of “Wizard of Oz”. Tin Woodman was a normal human, but was cursed because of his love for a divine girl. His body was turned into tin, and no longer feels the senses since then. Moreover, upon touching the tear, he gets rusty. Above his head appears to be a multi-layered theatre. The broad width of the horizontal line makes it look like a traditional Chinese landscape painting, with infinite possibilities growing in the mountainous ridges and peaks. The missing “heart” of the tin man is filled with a flying fish, fighting upwards and planning to jumping out of the predicament of life, like the tin man who wants to explore the world. The figure has both of his hands holding a withering heart because of waiting, which has nowhere to hide. Chang smartly presents the pity and the missing of life via the fairy tales. Her colours are magnificent and her strokes are subtle, leaving the sympathy and satire to the reality hidden inside. Meanwhile, her work also has the influence from western mysticism, enables it to free from the restraint of cartoon monotony. All the bizarre and grotesque scenes are her personal interpretation of the diversified reality, inviting us to explore the wonderland within her dreams.

Price estimate:
HKD: 170,000 – 250,000
USD: 21,900 – 32,300

Auction Result:
HKD: --