New Trend of Minimal Art---Paintings of Chang Chih-cheng

Over a very long period of time, new changes have taken place in Chang Chih-cheng’s works. He selects portrait among many topics as his target of painting and those things revealed have evolved into a mature and complete beauty. The history of portrait painting can be traced back to the beginning of civilization. For western routine themes, his works no longer rigidly adhere to those religions and realist depiction before the 19th century. It was injected cultural factors and expression of humanity, especially the means of expression of giving prominence to character since the birth of the impressionism.

It was not difficult to see that the magazines scattered in corners of the studio provided original materials for figure painting creation. As a carrier of popular culture, fashion magazine is not only linked with life of modern people but also a reflection and coverage of people’s real life. This coverage makes standards get simple, appreciation getting monotonous and the so-called personality is also devoid of publicity. The most prominent in Chang Chih-cheng’s new works is figure, which are well-known stars, artists and models in magazines. These people imitated and admired by the public are give new interpretation. The color, form, and structure of these artworks are reduced to their most primal elements, from the smallest geometric form to the purest elemental color, demonstrating the most essential external appearance with simple design, layout and use of saturated colors. The other uniqueness of Zhang Zhicheng’s works is his monotone paintings. By combining such effects as inking, layering, sewing and smearing using one color paint, controlling the amount of water used in creating lightness and thickness while staying within one color range to substitute the changing of colors. Zhang Zhicheng learns from the spirit of Minimal Art and parts with the use of rich color and brilliance. By employing primary colors and creating variances by controlling thickness of paint, he has expanded the language of monotone to its utmost practice.

In the face of a person, the traces of vitality and time often become the most effective impression. Painters concentrate on modeling features of the figure to show the memory and traces of life of figure they understands through sophisticated color application.