CHANG’s Artifice | A Meditation on Duality in the Age of Artificiality

This May, The Stallery—Hong Kong’s hybrid creative hub—marks its 10th anniversary with a landmark solo exhibition by its founder and resident artist, CHANG. Titled Artifice, this new body of work is CHANG’s most conceptual and minimalist to date, offering a profound exploration of duality, time, and the contradictions embedded in contemporary existence.

At its core, Artifice grapples with the tension between the natural and the artificial, a theme that permeates every aspect of the exhibition—from the subject matter and materials to the spatial experience it creates. The exhibition opens on 24 May 2025 and runs through 31 August, transforming The Stallery into an immersive Zen Garden where viewers are invited not just to observe, but to participate in a constantly shifting environment.

CHANG, a U.S.-born, Hong Kong-raised multidisciplinary artist, is known for subverting surface expectations through bold contrasts, halftone textures, and culturally layered visual storytelling. His bicultural upbringing, coupled with his red-green colorblindness, informs a visual language that is both deeply personal and strikingly universal. In Artifice, however, he departs from his typical vivid aesthetics to embrace a pared-down, contemplative form—what he calls “meta-minimalism.”

“Artifice strips away a lot of the pillars I’ve leaned on in the past—color, linework, representational imagery—and instead puts focus on concept, stillness, texture, and emotion,” says CHANG. “We’re constantly overstimulated, and I wanted to see what happens when you take that noise away—what’s left, and what that absence makes people feel.”

Inspired by traditional Chinese scholar’s rocks—natural stone formations prized for their abstract beauty and symbolic resonance—CHANG reimagines these ancient objects by embedding them with digital-age symbols like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth icons. These juxtapositions are not meant to be ironic, but reverent. “Scholar’s rocks have never just been about aesthetics,” he explains. “They’re philosophical objects. What happens when you carve into that sacred space and insert something like a like notification? It becomes a weird paradox—timeless and spiritual, but branded with something disposable.”

This paradox extends to the processes and materials behind each piece. Ancient methods like hand embroidery and bronze casting sit alongside 3D wood carving and silkscreen printing, embodying the tension between time-honored craft and mass production. One highlight includes two 120 cm high embroidery works that, from a distance, resemble silkscreen prints—only upon close inspection does their intricate craftsmanship become apparent. Such visual sleight of hand challenges the viewer’s assumptions about authenticity and illusion, permanence and ephemerality.

The gallery itself plays an integral role in communicating the exhibition’s themes. Transformed into an artificial Zen Garden, the space features white marble gravel, a faux half-bridge, LED-lit artificial clouds, and a ceiling that mimics grey, overcast skies. Here, CHANG invites viewers to become part of the artwork. Their footsteps shift the gravel, altering the landscape in real-time. Hidden within the gravel are 36 ceramic hearts, nearly invisible unless closely examined—reminding visitors that meaning requires attention, patience, and presence.

“Your presence literally reshapes the landscape,” CHANG notes. “That’s the point: creation and destruction are always happening at the same time. And sometimes, if you’re paying attention, you stumble upon a moment of joy too.”

In a world increasingly defined by binaries—authentic vs. fake, digital vs. physical, East vs. West—Artifice asks viewers to reconsider these divisions. CHANG doesn’t aim to resolve contradictions but to hold space for them, staging a quiet conflict where ambiguity is embraced, and answers are intentionally elusive.

The exhibition’s title—Artifice—is itself a nod to this ambiguity. Is artifice deception or ingenuity? Synthetic or sublime? As CHANG puts it, “AI is the ultimate dichotomy. It’s dead, but it’s alive. This exhibition is about those kinds of conflicts—the human-made versus the natural, the new versus the old, the real versus the artificial.”

For CHANG, who began his career by founding The Stallery as both a personal studio and a public platform for art, Artifice marks both a creative milestone and a philosophical turning point. “This series is a way of challenging my own status quo as I go into my second decade as an artist,” he reflects. “It’s less about providing clarity and more about inviting contemplation.”

With Artifice, CHANG offers a meditative yet urgent reflection on what it means to be human in an increasingly artificial world. In its quietest moments and subtlest textures, the exhibition resounds with questions that linger long after viewers leave the space: What is real? What is lasting? And how do we find meaning in the grey areas between?

CHANG

24 May – 31 Aug 2025

The Stallery, Wanchai

Free admission