STRANGE WORLD

SPACE:LIGHT
October 17 – November 17, 2019
The Plaxall Gallery, Long Island City, New York

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No one can be exempted from the need of sleep. In sleep, we are restored and refreshed while suspended between bodily functions and consciousness. We do not know what happens when sleeping.. What is the relationship between the actual world and the realm reigned by Hypnos?
As a photographer, the camera was applied to extend my vision. It recorded what was going on when I was in deep sleep and my visual sensation was cuff off from reality. While I slept my camera was set up to focus on the surroundings such as ceilings, walls, and corners of my room. The shutter of camera would take pictures to reveal the world I never saw.
Every day and every night several kinds of light, from the street-lamps and headlights through the windows and reflected around. Rays of light implied that something travelled through time and space. The light caught by my camera left a stroke, a layer on the film. In other words, something or someone passed by, their traces entered my room, and were recorded
Layers of light, from the world we are familiar, accumulated on the film, and thus developed an unfamiliar world. In a parallel, we are strangers to the world during our sleep. By the use of my camera, the time of sleep was collected as the remains of light and colors. As a result, a strange, yet fantastic, world is created and becomes visible.

Wen-Han Chang’s journey into photography began in university while studying physics. His studies in light optics developed into a fascination with holography. Soon, he found that he loved photography more than physics, so he decided to forfeit his masters degree in physics. From 2009 to 2017, he worked as a medical photographer. The work was fascinating, but his true passion is abstract photography. Chang is now doing his MFA in Photography at School of Visual Arts, to develop his exploration of time, light and space.

@wenhan.chang    Artist Website