Christian Chang

Artist | Artisan
Based in Paris, FR

Combining the work of matter and volume with the gestures of the ceramicist to take advantage of the polymorphic quality of clay, I try to bring an emotional imprint to my creations through a haptic approach and seek a balance in the trinity of composition, structure and materiality.
My work lies at the intersection of art and craft. The dimension of time remains integral, echoing the slowness of natural processes. It is from a muted color palette and earthy tones that I base part of my formal research between erosion and covering in order to enhance the raw, primitive and natural state of the material, liberate its intrinsic properties and stimulate its immutability to feed the metamorphosis from the living to the non-living or the switch between reality and imaginary. My practice focuses on the sculptural and functional object; I like to question our relationship to it and what it may provoke, to affirm its presence and place textures and the treatment of surfaces at the heart of my experimentation. Therefore, I collect natural and self-made tools to create textures.
I draw inspiration from everyday life, as an initial contact, naive, with the changing world that regulates our affects and a reflection on the human-nature relationship. In the end, it is a way of collecting observations which are then transcribed into a visual vocabulary in order to deliver an inky narrative about our time and examine the organic relationships we have built with our environment, and conversely.

Process
All my objects are hand-built in Paris, materials are sourced – as much as possible – from the vicinity, and everything is fired in my studio. The processes used take time, therefore each object is built over several days. Including shaping, firing and glazing, the process takes 2 to 3 weeks. Each piece is all-of-a-kind and is the object of much consideration and care. Although the utmost care is taken at all stages of the process, the material “clay” remains unpredictable and imperfections may appear.