Nicole Schoeni - my official artist profile -alivenotdead.com

New Exhibition: The Chen Family

The Chen FamilyPaintings by Yu Chen, Chen Yu and Chen Li

Vernissage: 13 April 2008 3:00 pm

Exhibition: 13 - 29 April 2008

Venue: Beijing Today Art Museum Gallery

Pingod, Building 4, Baiziwan Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022, China

Schoeni Art Gallery is delighted to announce our latest exhibition in association with Today Art Museum's gallery in Beijing on 13 April 2008 that will showcase the greatly anticipated work by the Chen family for the second time. By now, many will recognise the familiar faces of Yu Chen's Red Babies Series and Chen Yu's linear rows of multiple selves poised in satirical uniformity. This is, however, the youngest sibling Chen Li's second debut as an artist in his own right, and Schoeni Art Gallery, along with his elder two siblings are united in their support of not only his potential, but also his clearly defined talent.

Yu Chen's celebrated Red Babies communicate with unpredictable visuals in the spirit of Post-modernism. With concise aptitude, her baby motif is overtly frank, in keeping with the unabashed nature of infancy. Whilst dramatising the innocence of her subject matter, Yu Chen strives for an ironical overtone to emerge through her use of military uniform and her babies physical likenesses to Chairman Mao; sometimes they are playfully rendered with sweeties and ice-creams in their chubby hands; other times they are satirically portrayed as an irked enfant terrible. As a female artist dealing with social issues that are culturally and politically charged, Yu Chen's role as a mouthpiece for the Chinese creative woman infuses her work with a topical, and biological relevance. Yu Chen's palette of bright, brash reds depicts a raw emotional quality. Some of Yu Chen's newest works mark a departure from her previous style and places a greater emphasis on gender by more visibly articulating the sex of her Red Babies.

Chen Yu's cynical realism has met with acclaim since the inception of his particular style characterised by linear rows of duplicated human heads. Achieving balance through repetition used to a witty effect, Chen Yu targets specific and familiar social intrinsic values using farce and satire through vista tightened and relaxed by spatial binary opposition. Held within his repetitive framework is the amassed central identity of fashion and trend, forming a pseudo-Jungian archetype against a politically charged landscape. Emerging out of an "era where independent individuals and the liberalisation of thought are advocated", Chen Yu questions the standards of identity and his monotonous replication of the "self" lends an ironical twist to the one faltering exception in each piece; a sly wink, or a vague variation in facial expression and tone.

Since his graduation from the esteemed Beijing Central Academy of Fine Art, Chen Li's work has met with accolades, and he has received notable rewards for his artistic vision and skill. Distinguishing himself as an individual artist with a specific and unique visual expression that belies his filial relationship to the aforementioned artists, his elder siblings, Chen Li's works are startlingly self-conscious, aware and contemplative. Chen Li's figurative representations are notably more abstract and aloof, deploying surrealist metaphor and association to confront his sense of the world around him. At times garbing his figures in traditional ethnic costume, Chen Li's work deifies his subject matter, seamlessly blending Buddhist and Christian symbology with integrity and verve. Strengthened by his explicit technical finesse on the canvas, he borrows from Renaissance technique and composition. Chen Li's iconic works visually extrapolate the implications of Eastern and Western aesthetic representation by poising his figures against highly suggestive backdrops. Chen Li paints with a poetic lyricism that resumes the social commentary of China's recent history.

Written by Alexandra Hamlyn

Click on image for an enlarged view.

Yu Chen