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Supreme Ideals

Chen Brothers Exhibition

Works by Chen Li, Chen Yu

Vernissage: 27 May 2010,   6:30pm - 8:30pm
Exhibition Continues: 28 May 2010 - 3 July 2010

Main Gallery, 21 - 31 Old Bailey Street, Central, Hong Kong

Schoeni Art Gallery is proud to present the Chen Brothers exhibition, Supreme Ideals, in May 2010. The Chen family has been Schoeni long standing exclusive artists and this is the first time for the brothers, Chen Yu and Chen Li, to collaborate in a two manned exhibition that showcases their astonishingly unique talent. The exhibition will feature their latest evolvement as artists through their most recent body of work. Growing up in a small city in Guizhou province, they share the same family background, upbringing and education – both being graduates from the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts – yet in terms of age, they belong to different generations. In essence, their styles are completely different, but both offer a certain meditative quality in their art that is emotionally compelling, as it speaks individually and collectively about their history ,as well as the changes in the society they live in since China’s Reform and Opening-up policy.
 
Chen Li was born in 1975 as the youngest child of the family, just as the country began its open door policy. Chen Li’s art consists of his own constructed ‘reality’ reinterpreted on canvas, where each element of society is recomposed, re-evaluated and formed into a crowded and refined world. His work provides us with a desire to peek into a mysterious world with its very own secrets. The apocalyptical sensations conveyed through his recent works are clearly influenced by his obsession with computer war games and war books from his childhood. Chen Li creates evocative narratives by combining realism, surrealism and naturalism to simulate his imaginary world, one that often indicates alienation and separation through the frequent appearance of walls within the artwork. Chen Li’s art is very much shaped by his childhood and psychological complex as he himself explains, “Living in actual society, I am forced to interact with people around me, but I often find it very hard to blend in with the crowd. It is like as if there was an invisible wall between myself and those around me. On one hand, I live in reality, but on the other hand, I also live in my own ideal world. In terms of my life, I often feel that I am a loser, but standing in front of the canvas, I feel confident and complete, because I can once again compose the ‘reality’ that I know of onto the canvas.”

On the contrary, Chen Yu’s art deals with relationships between “order and rules” and “individual and freedom”. Much considered a cynical realist, Chen Yu’s infamous rows of duplicated identical human heads, with just one faltering exception in each piece, pose questions for self value, identity or even trends in society within a cultural environment that “stresses conformity and acting proper”, as the artist describes. Chen Yu was born in 1969, an era where kids grew up under strict rules, accustomed to social guidelines and structure. Within the monotonous grey palette of his oeuvre, the break from standardisation and repetition is the symbol that gives value, excitement and life to the entire piece of work. In his recent series, Chen Yu brings his expressions to a new level by employing elements such as sexual connotations in Untitled 2009 Series No. 8, or playfully drawing parallel between Jesus Christ with his disciples and Mao Zedong with his people in Untitled 2010 Series No. 2, as a possible mockery of Christianity vs. politics.

"My work conveys my feelings about life, and I also intend to express my own comments about the complicated relationships between the society and its individuals. I have always been very sensitive to facial expressions, those changes in expressions always delight me. Human expressions are closely connected to life, and their state of mind. I believe that, in facing society, the collective expressions of the masses must reflect their collective cultural background as well.” – Chen Yu