Adam Chang’s Sydney based “AC ART SPACE” exhibits a wide range of his monumental oil paintings including the most recent series, Portrait of Ai Weiwei” (2013), along with Mao and Terracotta Army(2011/12) and In Between Material and spiritual(2013).

The Mao and Terracotta Army series bring together two prodigious titans of recent Chinese history, Chairman Mao and the legendary Emperor Qin here referenced through the imagery of Qin’s funerary Terracotta Army. The terracotta army which dates from 221BC was not discovered until 1974.  

Mao and Qin are the two most powerful and significant figures to have ruled China, and the two have proved a signature subject for Chang to which he has returned several times in recent years. Qin became the first emperor of ancient China when he united the country in 221BC.  He formed the first centralized government and introduced major economic reform. Chairman Mao who was fascinated by Qin, become the first leader of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the metaphorical relationship between Mao and Qin has allowed Chang to investigate the two greatest leaders in Chinese history – separated by two thousand years – but united in their thirst for power.

By introducing images of Qin’s terracotta army – anonymous defenders of Qin’s power even in death - alongside images of Mao in these large-scale paintings allows Chang to reflect on how political power in all its manifestations is a timeless universal phenomenon, regardless of who holds the reins of that power.

The thirst for power and political domination exhibited by despots such as Qin and Mao is something all too familiar throughout the modern world.

With “In Between Material and spiritual” Chang tackles head-on what he sees as a major contemporary societal problem, the growing concern with material over spiritual values, which create a dizzy and destabilizing, “unbalanced” in society, Chang believes.

By using conjoined twins as his subject matter, the artist tries to stimulate the viewer into a consideration of a world where, hunger, poverty and disadvantage continue to proliferate.

The massive monumentality of Chang’s portraits of Ai Weiwei’s are a simple statement of how one man’s uncompromising resistance to a to a regime that denies its citizens simple human freedoms can highlight and underscore the nobility inherent in all of mankind. In Portrait of Ai Weiwei Chang unites Ai Weiwei’s life, art and ideology with these pressing concerns of modern China.

Throughout all his paintings Chang’s reduced colour palette and vigorous broad brush stroke technique creates a surface tension and a vivid aesthetic.