American-Chinese artist Rutherford Chang, scion of Taiwan semiconductor firm, dies at 45
Tributes are pouring in from the international art community for Rutherford Chang, the American-Chinese artist best known for making a video collage of Andy Lau Tak-wah's movie death scenes, exhibiting as a piece of conceptual art his own massive collection of copies of The Beatles' White Album, and melting 10,000 copper US pennies into a single cube.
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His singular art practice was all the more unusual because he was the son of Taiwanese billionaire Jason Chang, and considered the heir apparent of a large semiconductor and property empire.
Born and raised in the US, Chang majored in psychology at Wesleyan University, a private liberal arts university in the state of Connecticut, where he shared accommodation with Aki Sasamoto – now a New York-based Japanese artist.
'Rutherford was already an artist when I met him as a student,' Sasamoto says by email. 'He was wearing clothing he made himself out of everyday objects, taking care of their seams with
US Postal Service packing tape.
'He would be labelling everything he lived with, using embossing tape. Everybody around him knew him with 'his way of doing things'. None of these were activities he did for class, which was for me the proof that an artful way of living was simply part of him.'
Rutherford Chang (left) at an exhibition of his 'We Buy White Albums' project in Germany. Photo: Axel Heimken/ Getty Images
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