There is something deeply satisfying about the physicality of Chen Zhen’s sculpture and choice of materials. It seems he often chooses to leave the material unaltered but manipulated out of it’s normal context. A particular and specific use of visual language. The black rubber inner tube becomes an almost natural element, like grass or reeds, yet they are unapologetically honest in their use with no attempt to cover up or hide the history of the objects or material.
In fact the presence of the history of the object is imperative, intrinsic to the reading of the work. The language of history and past experiences is. curious one because that too is read and created especially by the viewer and their lived experience. The associations and emotions attached to an old chair or a drum can be multifarious.Yet there is still a specific tone of voice to the work. Awkward and suggestive, nostalgic and melancholic.
I like the work but I wouldn’t want to make it.
“One should learn to break out of one’s own cocoon and be courageous enough to break away from one’s self and to abandon one’s own cultural context. The Chinese proverb ‘the soul has left its shelter’ in fact symbolizes the critical state in which one’s creative capacity has reached the most active zenith.” Chen Zhen
(Quoted in Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea 2003, p.83.)
Connected to this notion of moving beyond one’s immediate cultural environment is Chen’s term ‘Transexperience’, which he coined in 1998 while living between New York, Paris and Shanghai in order to describe what curator Hou Hanru has defined as ‘the dynamic and dialectical process that occurs when an individual is displaced between cultures, societies and languages’ (Hanru, ‘“Transexperience” in the art of Chen Zhen’, in Serpentine Gallery 2001, p.15.) According to Hanru, ‘Transexperience suggested to [Chen] both the fusion with these other influences and, simultaneously, the ability to transcend their impact’ (Hanru 2001, p.15). As a result of his combining creative techniques and influences from the divergent countries and cultures in which he resided in works such as Cocon du Vide, Chen has been described by art historians as a ‘transcultural artist’, as was explored in the exhibition Chen Zhen’s Transcultural Art in Paris Retrospective at Galerie Perrotin, Paris, in 2014. Tate website:
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chen-cocon-du-vide-t12941
///Temporary Homes For The Liminal\\\