Chen Zhen

executed in 2000

Galleria Continua, Beijing
Acquired by the present owner from the above

This work is generally in good condition. There are a small number of breaks to the wax candles.
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Chen Zhen is one of the most compellingly unique talents to emerge from among the pioneering artists of China’s post-Cultural Revolution period. Combining an intense sensitivity to material and craft with the humanist rationality of the philosopher, Chen’s sculptural installations and constructions are at once physically grounded and mysteriously auratic. Through his own lived experience of the dichotomies of health and illness, and of cultural displacement and connectedness, Chen gained heightened sensitivity towards the complex and fragile systems of human existence. Chen Zhen was born in 1955 in Shanghai and educated there. After moving to Paris in 1986, he experienced constant changes in his cultural environment, which inspired him to incorporate the “experience of assimilation and transcendence” into his work to create an idiosyncratic style. Created in 2000, Lumière Innocente was exhibited with the large-scale work in the same series, Field of Synergy, in his solo show (also called “Field of Synergy”) in Italy in the same year. For Chen, “synergy” is not merely a physical phenomenon, but a mode of thought. It is about how to think about something by placing it in a network. This notion demonstrates Chen’s multicultural background, as well as his ability to benefit from the cross-fertilisation of ideas between multiple disciplines and cultures. Field of Synergy was the artist’s prelude to his“lifelong project: I want to be a doctor.” But unfortunately he passed away after a prolonged struggle with hemolytic anemia. Lumière Innocente was an important late work that summarised his career.

At the age of 25, Chen Zhen was diagnosed with hemolytic anemia, which would continue to influence his art. In Lumière Innocente, a small child-size bed is reversed and wrapped with transparent plastic tubes that themselves contain light-bulbs. The entire work resembles a glowing cocoon. For Chen, a bed was a companion in life and a symbol of the human body. A child’s bed symbolises the shining innocence of youth, while the plastic tubes symbolise the money, power, and desire of the adult world. Fortunately, the light of innocence continues to shine in spite of them.

After his death in Paris in late 2000, Chen Zhen was posthumously honoured with major retrospective exhibitions internationally, including shows at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2001), PS1 in New York (2003);
Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2003) and the
Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2006), among others. Major venues where his work has recently been featured include the 2009 Venice Art Biennale, the French Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and a major retrospective exhibition at the Musee Guimet in Paris (2010-2011). A catalogue raisonné of Chen’s artistic oeuvres currently is being organised by the Associations des Amis de Chen Zhen, a group of international artists and curators committed to preserving Chen’s artistic legacy.