Chen Zhen

each drawing signed and dated 04/99

This work is accompanied with a certificate of authenticity

The work is in generally very good condition. There is mild rust found on metal part of the installation. The bat has some wearing along then rough edges of the ears and the wings, but seems inherent to the medium and working method of the artist. Character otherwise in satisfactory condition.
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Chen Zhen, one of China's pioneering conceptual and installational artists, died of cancer in Paris in mid-December 2000. Known for his mercurial versatility in art, his calm demeanor, and his courageous efforts to continue working while ill, Chen was adept not only in formal issues but also in social commentary, allowing him to create sculptures and environments that live in the rich cultural space between Asian traditional philosophy and the Western avant-garde. Because his work tends to fall in between categories and cultures, its resonance as art sometimes needs explanation from a writer or curator. Yet the sheer exuberance of his imagination often functions as its own guide to the various, sometimes esoteric projects of his thought. For example, in Jue-Chang: Fifty Strokes to Each (1998), his drum construction composed of chairs and beds outfitted with hides stretched over them, enabled more than a few people to play loudly what became a symphony of their own making. Ostensibly yielding to anarchy, the drum orchestra provides drummers with the chance to make noise in harmony.

As interested as Chen was in playing with the influences of the West, he insisted on his autonomy as a Chinese artist, explaining that even if the majority of cars people drove in Shanghai were made by the West, the drivers were inevitably Chinese. Clearly, Chen found resources in the recent history of Western experimental art, chiefly in performance and installation; however, he was equally committed to a Chinese interpretation of these resources, which might be transformed by someone whose vivid imagination found correspondences in another culture. If Joseph Beuys or Jannis Kounellis comes to mind as an indirect mentor for Chen, one can be sure that Chen would find ways of incorporating Chinese historical and contemporary culture into a third space, where the most interesting things might - and did - take place.

Lire les cendres (To read the cinders) (1999) occurs in a series of works, beginning in 1990, in which the ashes of newspapers are used - Chen has said of his materials, "Newspapers and burnt paper are artificial products returned to the state of natural products. A new potential." For this large piece (110 by 220 by 20 cm), the ashes are encased in glass boxes; there is a large vitrine on the left and a considerably narrower one on the right. They are separated in the middle by a series of glass cubes in rows; individual windows have a single numbers or letter (not Chinese characters) written out in white dots. A large magnifying glass hangs in its own glass encasement in the vitrine on the left; it magnifies the words "LIRE LES CENDRES," which is translated as the phrase "to read the cinders." This is a wonderfully poetic if rationally untenable notion; perhaps what Chen means is that we must interpret the various events and conflagrations of history, symbolized by the burned newspapers. Idiosyncratic and emotionally compelling, Lire les cendres embodies an attitude toward the past, holocausts included, that hopefully shifts our attitude toward less destructive activities.