Shen Chen Exhib

In this exhibition, Shen Chen debuts new work from his ongoing series of acrylic paintings on canvas, as well as a return to his meticulous ink painting on paper – a discipline that was the beginning of his artistic career. In his paintings, the artist’s methodical layering of color achieves resonant tonal hues, and manifests a rigorous grounding in a meditation on breath. To create his subtle ombré surfaces, Chen works with the canvas on the studio floor. He layers the paint in precisely calibrated vertical brushstrokes; the discrete horizontal lines visible on the surface are a record of where each brushstroke – and attendant breath – begins.

Shen Chen is a Chinese artist, living in New York. This is not unusual. Over the past twenty-five years, some of China’s most gifted and celebrated artists have followed a similar geographical transfer. When I met Shen Chen nearly a decade ago, his work had been moving forward for some time. His studio was in good order and exhibitions were happening on a regular basis in China, the United States, and beginning in Europe. In an interview for a catalog published on the occasion of a solo exhibition at the former China Square Gallery in New York (2007), Chen asserted that upon losing his “identity” by coming to the United States, he felt an extraordinary sense of liberation, an endless surge of energy. He could not stop painting.

Exhibition Catalog (pdf)