|
P.S.1
Contemporary Art Center presents an exhibition of installations, drawings,
and sculptures by Chinese-born artist Chen Zhen (1955–2000). As a
tribute to the artist, P.S.1 presents works created during the last five
years of his life, all of which poetically articulate his knowledge of
traditional Chinese culture and Western avant-garde art to engage Eastern
and Western audiences.
Born in Shanghai in 1955, Chen Zhen grew up
during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, which ended in the
late 1970’s. With this transition, Chen became interested in combining
traditional Chinese philosophy (forbidden under Maoist rule) and Western
practices as an alternative to the government’s official cultural
ideology. After immigrating to Paris in 1986 to attend the École
Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the Institut des Hautes Études
en Arts Plastiques, he abandoned his early work in painting in favor of
mixed media installation.
A central theme in Chen’s work is
creating harmony through difference. Using the human body, illness, and
medicine as metaphors, Chen explores the intricate, and often paradoxical,
relationship between the material and the spiritual, community and
individual, and interior and exterior. Using his concept of the organic
whole, derived from Chinese medical theory, Chen constructs complete
entities from disparate components, referencing the human body or an
architectural model.
At a time when neither multiculturalism nor
globalization had been articulated, Chen was interested in cross-cultural
social dynamics. His work reflects his absorption of different cultures,
social contexts, and aesthetic approaches in an increasingly globalized
world. With highly interactive elements, Chen’s works foster an exchange
between artistic space and the observer. Using sound and everyday
materials such as candles, beds, chairs, and even chamber pots, Chen links
the physical world to the spiritual, ritualistic one. The result is an
aesthetic immersed in the traditional past, but aligned with the
present.
For Jue Chang - Fifty Strokes to Each
(1998), Chen stretched animal skins over the flat surfaces of more than
one hundred chairs and beds collected from different parts of the world,
creating makeshift drums hung from a large wooden frame. Chen Zhen’s
monumental interactive installation invites a diverse audience to create a
collective voice by playing the drums. Inner Body Landscape (2000)
is composed of five interconnected sculptures made from hundreds of
colored candles, Chinese symbols of individual lives. This installation
refers to the traditional Chinese belief that the entire body, rather than
just the disease, must be treated for healing.
Chen’s installation of three sculptures, Autel
de Lumiere (2000), children’s wooden chairs piled with multi-colored
candles, symbolize houses where diverse cultures co-exist, forming a
village without borders. The exhibition will also feature one of Chen’s
last works, Zen Garden (2000), in which illuminated representations
of body organs made of smooth alabaster – pierced by metal medical
instruments such as forceps, tweezers, and scissors – are suspended over
raked sand. This model for a public garden fuses Chinese and Western views
of medicine. Chen transforms a household object in Black Broom
(2000) fabricating a larger-than-life sculpture from transfusion tubing
with hypodermic needles protruding from the “bristles”. Crystal
Ball (1999), a spherical flask filled with saline solution surrounded
by an organic cage made of abacus and prayer beads, and Crystal
Landscape of Inner Body (2000), made of pieces of clear blown glass
shaped as internal organs, also address opposing approaches in Eastern and
Western medicine. Several drawings for Zen Garden and Inner Body
Landscape supplement the installations.
In addition to recent tributes in Greece,
Italy, and the United States to Chen Zhen, who died from the rare medical
condition autoimmune hemolytic anemia in 2000, his work has been presented
at venues throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America
during the past decade. Included were group exhibitions such as
"Heart of Darkness," (1994) at the Kröller-Müller Museum,
Otterlo, the Netherlands; "First Shanghai Biennial" (1996) at
the Shanghai Art Museum; "Hong Kong, Etc.," (1997) at the second
Johannesburg Biennial; and "Aperto Overall," (1999) at the 48th
Venice Biennial. Solo exhibitions have been presented at, among others,
Centre International d’Art contemporain in Montréal; Center for
Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan; Deitch Projects, New York; National
Maritime Museum, Stockholm; Tel Aviv Museum of Art: MOCA – Museum of
Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy; and
ADDC-Espace Culturel François Mitterand, Périgueux.
Chen Zhen: A Tribute is organized by
Antoine Guerrero, P.S.1 Director of Operations. The installation advisor
is Xu Min, and the project managers are Jeffrey Uslip and Rachael Zur.
Special thanks go to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, which held
a modified version of this exhibition in the fall of 2002.
The exhibition catalogue accompanying Chen
Zhen: A Tribute was directed by Antoine Guerrero and edited by Jeffrey
Uslip and Rachael Zur. It contains texts by Jeffrey Deitch, Hou Hanru,
Eleanor Heartney, France Morin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lorenzo Fiaschi, and
Jerome Sans. It also contains artistic tributes by Eric Angels, Janine
Antoni, Sylvie Blocher, Domenico De Clario, Yan Pei-Ming, Cai Guo-Quiang,
Sam Samore, and Nari Ward.
Chen Zhen: A Tribute is made
possible by Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto, the Cultural Services of the
French Embassy, Annie Wong Art Foundation, Galleria Continua, San
Gimignano, Italy, agnes b., and Anthony T. Podestá.
For more information, please contact
Rachael Dorsey, P.S.1 Press Office, at press@ps1.org
|
