Daniel Chang

Hello,
my name is Daniel Chang. I'm a half Korean, half German, living in the south of Germany, near Stuttgart where I work as a teacher. I'm also an Origami enthusiast and designer captivated by the unique and manifold material that is paper and by the sheer endless seeming possibilities that arise from folding it.
Though paper already played an important role in my early life thanks to my mother, my first contact with Origami was at the age of 14 when my cousin came from the US to visit me for a couple of weeks. With him he brought an eight pointed Origami star by R. Neal that could be transformed into a ring. I got so enthralled by that simple model that it settled my fate with paper-folding. From there on my road continued from folding simple boxes and stars to animals and finally starting to create my own artwork.
There are a couple aspects to Origami that make it such a big part of my life. In many ways it is comparable to magic in the sense that something as plain as a piece of paper can transform into a characterful creation. Even though compared to other art forms there are many limitations with paper-folding, it amazes me how you can overcome them with your mind and imagination to create seemingly impossible looking models time and time again.
Another important part about Origami that I value highly is the connections you make. As a teenager I was quite content folding paper by myself and never even thought of looking for like-minded people to share my hobby with. That changed when I was folding as a college student during a seminar. When I looked up to realize someone else besides me was doing the same thing. As it turns out she was also an Origami enthusiast. We quickly became friends and regularly met up for folding sessions as well as inspire each other and grow as artists. Over the years I met more and more people who shared the same passion and I realized that Origami can be a very social experience which lets you overcome distances and brings you closer to people.
The interaction and exchange of ideas with other folders and designers during Origami conventions also helped me greatly to thrive and find my style as an artist. A lot of inspiration came from meeting Giang Dinh, Hoang Tien Quyet and also József Zsebe who helped me grasp the concept of wet-folding and opened my eyes for soft forms. I strayed from what one might consider as regular Origami and started to explore organic forms as well as curved folds more and more. Thanks to Melina Hermsen, who is the friend I was talking about earlier, other art forms peaked my interest too. In the last few years I got to see a wide range of different art pieces from various eras. Especially sculptures were a source of inspiration at that time. Seeing the busts made by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, a sculptor in Vienna during the 18th century, left quite a mark with me. His character studies depicted heads with grimaces, facial features heavily distorted in an almost silly way. Even though I folded masks from time to time this encounter pushed me to try out a more sculptural approach.
A lot of techniques I use now for my faces came from observing classical sculptures like that and the way they are made. Sculpting a face out of clay or folding it with paper are two processes that have a lot in common to me. Of course paper doesn't have the same properties as clay, you cannot add or subtract something but using wet-folding you can press soft shapes into the material with your fingers or with tools similar to the way you would do with clay. To do so I use curved folds to bend and to a certain degree stretch parts of the paper to create tension which generates the illusion of volume. The bent and curved areas depend on each other and determine what is possible. For example, a curved eyebrow allows shaping the upper eyelid, the creases for the nose influence the way you can shape the cheek muscles and also the way the upper lip will bulge.
With those techniques it's possible to make the main aspects that are necessary to recognize a human face. It is the foundation for my work to create expressive features, something that feels alive rather than just like a mask. But to achieve that difference there has to be also a profound understanding of the human anatomy. For that I started to study the structure of the skeleton, the form and function of the muscles and the skin to get a better grasp of the shape and volume. Observing people is a very important aspect of my research for understanding different moods too. It is often subtle details that are important for those expressions. For example a confident look could be defined by way the eyelids are opened or the corner of the mouth is shaped. If one of those details is changed the overall expression could look completely different than anticipated or at best somewhat strange. Creating a face can take me up to half a day before completion because of the way I try to be wary of those fine details and their dependence towards each other.
Even with a complex process like that I do not intend to create exact replicas of people. Instead I try to find the essence of a feeling or even a story to show with my sculptures that will hopefully draw people in and touch or even provoke them.