Calm and Comfortable: The Paintings of Chang Xiaojun

Painting is Chang Xiaojun’s preferred artistic medium. Although his oil paintings are stylistically and visually reminiscent of Western modernism, they still leave the viewer with the feeling that the works are very local, even traditional. This feeling is related to the artist’s focus on expressing his feelings about daily life as a contemporary Chinese citizen. The artist draws on the deeply engrained Eastern metaphysical concept of life and his personal experience of it. He blends these elements with his feelings about daily life. Therefore, Chang’s works are naturally rooted in his native country and strongly linked to its traditional context.

As an individual immersed in contemporary life, Chang Xiaojun cannot cut himself off from the tide of the times, which surge onward amid the hustle and bustle. Instead, it is the comparison with his era that allows him to recognize more clearly his own triviality and ordinariness. He has chosen a low-key approach to art and life due to his innate attributes and later habits. When he confronts his era and himself, this low-key style naturally allows him to slowly achieve balance. This choice of approach embodies the artist’s view on life and art. Therefore, the practice of Buddhism plays a role, sometimes a leading one, in the artist’s life and art. Through Buddhism, the artist continually balances his own feelings. In this way, Chang’s disposition is similar to that of traditional Chinese scholars.

Chang Xiaojun indentifies himself with Buddhism. He blends together his feelings and thoughts in real life with the illusions of the spiritual world. As a result, his artworks are filled with an illusory, lyrical, and contemplative aura. In his view, the self is existence of the real, corporeal body. However, in the spiritual world, the experiences of the body have the richer meaning of the coexistence of reality and illusion. In this process, Chang comes to deeply understand the richness of the physical world, which allows his experiences and the metaphysical world to merge together.