There is ample information available about the multidisciplinary visual artist Chang Yoong Chia accessible to all at www.changyoongchia.net. Though the website-modest and unpretentious-much like the introverted artist himself, includes articles, reviews, interviews, his CV and a decent selection of photos plus recent works, as well as performances culled from his more than a decade career as a practicing visual artist, it is admittedly still, a difficult task to categorize accurately or to confine Yoong Chia comfortably within a specific context when analyzing or discussing his artistic output without being confounded or contradicted by his next creative oeuvre. Although his works, from paintings, drawings, prints to 3D forms of various scales and dimension, uses traditional art materials as well as common everyday objects such as wood, bones, eggshells etc, it is his unconventional approach to realizing his unique artistic vision that sets him apart from the generations of practicing artists in the country.

 

Without resorting to painting those silly vainglorious self-aggrandizing portraits or striking ‘heroic’ poses complete with traditional garments and what not in dramatic lighting, his works especially his paintings make subtle references to the self sans the insecure need to allude to ethnocentrism or religious identity (which as practiced here, is accompanied with a hefty price tag!). In Yoong Chia’s drawings and paintings, there is usually a wide-eye, male figure with his hair parted, sometimes attired in his salary man mode, other times sky-clad, and of late, frolicking with his female counterpart, whom both, without feeling being intruded upon, allows the viewers a glimpse of their tryst in their secret garden. What would express and complete one’s self so utterly if not one’s own other half? Adam and his Eve, Shiva and his Shakti, Yin and its Yang…..    

 

Among Yoong Chia’s varied outputs are paintings on found, everyday objects. Discarded and perishable, some were collected from his daily strolls or from travels abroad. The themes of the minutely executed paintings and drawings on eggshells, animal skulls and bones, rocks, leaves, wood and other fragile materials are usually symbolically about birth, life and all the excitement and follies that we encounter along the way to the inevitable-death, which are all aptly enhanced by the materials used and ingeniously mounted or framed. There is always an element of irony and a dark sense of humor underlying these works which offers much amusement and food for thought. 

 

Some aspects of Symbolism, Surrealism and Magic Realism are discernable or can be attributed to Yoong Chia’s works. He had in the past cited the visual artworks of Hans Christian Andersen as important influences too though the motivation that primarily fuels his imagination has always been the recollections selected from his childhood years as well as impressions and observations from daily life. However, far from conveniently feeding off nostalgic longings and exploiting fond sentimentalities, his primary interests and themes have consistently shifted between or rather embodied both the existential, which he couches in the absurd, ironic or out-of-the-ordinary and the primordial without being Primitivist, in the fantastical.

 

Recently, certain issues and sentiments that are keenly felt by the artist living and working in today’s perplexing political and cultural climate of uncertainty has slowly made its presence more visible in his works especially his collages, though it is done so without the pseudo political posturing or simpleminded strategies of appealing to nationalism, ethnic chauvinism or historicism as retort. Instead, all that is registered by the artist’s sense and sensibilities are presented in various lush, imaginary settings or mundane situations populated by men, flora and fauna in a symbiotic relationship where each with their own peculiar roles and functions, live in disquiet equilibrium.​