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An Eye for An Eye

Solo Exhibition by Chen Yu

Works by Chen Yu

Vernissage: 13 January 2005,   12:20am - 12:20am
Exhibition Continues: 14 January 2005 - 2 February 2005

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

Schoeni Art Gallery is proud to present Chen Yu's second one man exhibition in Hong Kong, to be held at the main Gallery on Thursday the 13th of January, 2005 and the exhibition will continue till the 2nd of February, 2005.

Chen Yu, best known for his "Lining Up" series, explores the notion of "individuality" in his earlier works, believing that "the individual must take on some kind of identity as their reason for existence, showing that they are the working parts of the social machine. Although people are different in appearance and character, what I get is the same impressions, the same thoughts, and the sense of a thousand people with one face".

Chen Yu's work has been participated in the ChinArt travelling museum exhibition, which has been shown in Duisburg at the Küppersmühle Museum, in Rome at the MACRO, in Budapest at the Ludwig Museum and in Bydgosszcz, Poland at the Stadtgalerie and in Palma de Mallorca at La Lonja in September 2004.

Economic expansion in China in recent years has prompted the artist to question the rapid changes in society and its impact on the ordinary people. One can also find in Chen's work that the artist rejects individuality as being any different than monotony (based on the observation that people are driven by the same motive) and also argues that despite "individuality" is regarded as the new "vague", they are in fact a group of collective monotonous symbols with slight variations. Chen cleverly expressed his view with references heavily borrowed from Rouge Cynicism (i.e. political and satirical) and Pop Art (i.e. confrontational and open), which had both dominated the thinking of contemporary Chinese art in the 80's and 90's.

In this new collection "An Eye for an Eye", Chen Yu further blurs the line between the two schools of thoughts and explores a new visual language that is responding to the social changes of our time. The language employed by the artist is subtle; the viewer may need to read his entire series in order to understand the messages behind his works.

A fully coloured catalogue will be released in conjunction with the exhibition.

Article written by Martha Liew

A catalogue was published in conjunction with this exhibition. For more details click here.
For an interesting article about Chen Yu in the South China Morning Post, please click here.