In Conversation：In Conversation with Johnson Chang

"It’s always the looking backwards as well as the looking forwards that makes human beings sane and social, and makes life liveable. We talk about the advance in science and technology, we talk about the great leap forward in material goods and technology, but emotional adaptation and how the human mind and the relation to the world adapts, it moves at a much slower pace. There is this gap that we need to deal with, and in a way, art projects try to think about these issues.”
Johnson Chang

Johnson Chang Tsong-zung is an art dealer and curator with one foot in the past and one foot in the future. His first Hanart Gallery set up with artist Harold Wong, in 1977, dealt primarily in classical Chinese painting traditional painting.

With his second gallery called Hanart TZ - the initials came from his Chinese name – he introduced to the world some of the most radical and avant-garde art coming out of the Chinese art scene. The Hanart TZ Gallery celebrated its 30th anniversary just last year, and in those thirty years Johnson has become one of the best known ambassadors for contemporary Chinese art, from “The Stars” early shows to Gu Wenda and Qiu Zhijie, whether from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or by artists of the Chinese diaspora.

In a further contrast to his interest in the modern, Johnson is fascinated by China’s classical culture and lifestyle. With his brother, sister-in-law, and Shanghai artist Hu Xiangcheng, he has played a part in building a traditional Chinese village from the ground up, using ancient building methods. The village, in the Jinze neighbourhood of Shanghai, is designed to be a centre for traditional Chinese artists, craftsmen and musicians.

Johnson sees the Chinese village and its social structure as a microcosm of Chinese culture, a model for a form of living more connected to one’s neighbours and the natural world. He is worried that the modern day emphasis on capitalism in mainland China is swamping what was best about the country’s ancient traditions.

"Traditionally in China, the clan system was very much the basis of self-rule that would give an alternative to the type of centralised government control that we now all loathe so much today … So there was a very high level of local participation, perhaps not on an individual level as we speak of democracy today but very much in the communal sense." Johnson Chang