Chang Chi-Wen – inspired by his teacher Lai Wu-Hsiung, an oil and watercolor painter – had shown interests in art since school days. After graduation, he had produced artwork on commission for several years, which laid a solid foundation for his skills and techniques in art creation. Ever since he was invited to do large-scale sculpture in Japan, he has dedicated himself to the art of sculpture.
In actual creative process, to bring an idea into a work of art poses a challenge to one’s will power and ability to control every step of production. It takes more than two months for a sculptor with his full concentration to finish a bronze artwork: from making an original sculpture in clay to making the mother mold of the original, pouring the bronze, and finishing the casting. The entire process gives the sculptor a luxury to fully express his creativity and to amaze his collectors with great pleasures.
He likes to draw inspirations from nature and daily life. With a great sense of humor and exceptional imagination, he combines images of animals with plants to create a series of playful artworks. The lovely funny series “I Love Getting Rich” and “I Love Cauliflower,” for example, were inspired by a photo of sheep. For a man in love with culinary like him, the sheep’s fluffy curly hair reminds him of the head of the cauliflower, and the pronunciation of “flower” in Chinese is similar to “flourishing” – He thus transforms this ordinary vegetable into work of art with interesting twists.
The “Key Master” series, with the combination of an antiqued key and a certain hand gesture, manifests his imagination of the past, present, and future. For example, the image of a hand holding a cell phone with an ancient key symbolizes “staying ahead and seizing the opportunity,” and the image of a thumb disk with an ancient key is to open the door of future, meaning “success in hand.”