Yan Wen Chang

A.D. NYC presents Nympho, an exhibition of new drawings and paintings by Yan Wen Chang. For her first solo exhibition in New York, Chang references the German novel The Loser by Thomas Bernhard which centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow colleagues who are destroyed by Gould’s genius and in so renounce their own musical ambitions — one dies by suicide while the other retreats into obscurity. In Nympho, Chang explores the human conditions and responses to the obsessions of success, failure, and fame. The motif of the question mark recurs and is reconfigured throughout all the works in the exhibition.

Over the past ten years, Chang has developed a painting vocabulary populated by self-portraits, cars, rose bouquets, stars and banknotes. Having immigrated to Toronto alone at 17 in pursuit of a better life, she utilizes this imagery to speak to the contradictory forces of her version of the American Dream.

Yan Wen Chang (b. 1993) holds a MFA from the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph in Canada and a BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include Weatherproof (Chicago), Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto), X in Residency (Toronto), and General Hardware (Toronto). Her 33-foot public billboard entitled same problem my father had and what he dreamed was on display at Hamilton Artists’ Inc. in Canada from 2022 to 2023. Chang’s forthcoming solo exhibitions include Hawkins Headquarters (Atlanta) in 2024 and Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto) in 2025.