Chen Wen Ling

Biography

Ode To Art is proud to present a solo exhibition for Chen Wenling this Art Stage 2012,
12 - 15 January at Booth D405, Marina Bay Sands Exhibition and Convention Centre

Chen Wenling is a recognized as one of the top ten contemporary sculptors in China today. Following a number of prestigious exhibitions, such as Art Basel in Switzerland and the Shanghai Biennale, Chen has been represented by Ode To Art for the last five years.

Born in 1969 in Anxi, a small, remote village in Fujian province, China, Chen remembers his family being so poor that his parents could not afford to buy him toys and he grew up making figurines out of clay to entertain himself. Yet, hecounts himself lucky because his parents encouraged his artistic talent and Chen went on to study at the Xiamen Academy of Art and Design, and then at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. During those artistically formative years at art school, Chen remembers greatly admiring the famed French sculptor Rodin, whose work he considered to be ground-breaking, as well as Picasso, Magritte, Dali and the Colombian sculptor Botero. More recently the works of British artist Damian Hirst have interested him.

The two main themes of Chen Wenling’s sculptures are the manifestations of extreme humanity and immaterial images in a consumption society. His self extreme condition begins from the series of “Red Boy”. It is neither realism nor vanguard sculpture, but the self expression of Chen Wenling himself to the critical state of life. For example, dread, gladness, game and fancy are thebasic main motivations of his sculpture. This series of the “Red Boy” conveyshis experience in an autobiographic form.

In terms of artistic language, Chen Wenling’s recent artworks are closer to a type of surrealistic legendary language structure, for instance, people are riding on pigs as if they were riding the pre-historic elephant or pre-historic mammals, they seems to be fighting against pigs just like the heroes struggling against dinosaurs. The recent series blurs the directness of the social metaphor, but is inclined to revealing the preposterous being of the self. Form experience is always a crucial part in Chen Wenling’s sculpture practice, so his recent works are more like an art experiment in artistic language. The series departure thesociality of sculpture and the direct criticism of post-ideology in “Happy Life”. It seems that this brings Chen Wenling back to presenting the human realm of self-indulgence in a circuit. Compared to the universal humanity and the extremeness in “Red Boy”, this time, what Chen Wenling wants to show is not an ideality or imagination which directs the humanity to perfect, but a pessimism and preposterous sense. That is, he attempts to insert a strong element of theself, causing this visual layout to appear still in the midst of a struggle.

Chen's new work 'Statue of Liberty and Gold Bull' explores the ironic symbolism of the Statue of Liberty. As one of the most well-recognised icons ofthe United States, it symbolised the promise of a land of equal opportunity, human rights, freedom of speech, democracy and fairness. This sculpture plays on the world's changing perception of America after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. The original inscription is "July 4,1776"; the day America declared independence from British rule. Chen's Statue of Liberty is holding a book inscribed with "Liberal Economics". His sculpture suggests the over-liberalised U.S. economy as the root of theeconomic crisis.

'ThisIs Not An Elephant' is an exciting new sculpture that is arriving soon in the gallery. Increasingly dealing with global issues far beyond the personal, Chen's sculptures grapple with challenges that question mankind's prevalent dilemmas. As such, his works have the ability to connect with even more international audiences. The elephant is the largest land mammal on earth and accordingly dispels the largest waste. A metaphor for the growing size and production volumeof large corporations, small elephants emerge as waste from a huge elephant. Rusted industrial wires bent into a nest house the elephants and show how over-production is already destroying our environment, homes and daily lives. The monkey represents man – anguished between the hunger for progress andthediminishing environment he depends onto thrive.

Articles

Fable of Chen Wenling -  Fighting and Imagination in a Consumer Society 

Zhu Qi, Wangjing, March 2006

Thecluster of immaterial images when China comes to a consumption society isrepresented in Chen Wenling’s sculptures. His sculptures adopt an allegorizedvisualize, which reveals the mental infiltration of the materialism in the 90sto a generation and the Chinese self-condition from that time, and also thecommon consciousness of post-ideology.

The two main themes of Chen Wenling's sculptures are the manifestations of extreme humanity and immaterial images in a consumption society. His self extreme condition begins from the series of "Red Boy". It is neither realism nor vanguard sculpture, but the self expression of Chen Wenling himself to the critical state of life. For example, dread, gladness, game and fancy are the basic main motivations of his sculpture. The series of the "Red Boy" conveys his experience in autobiographic form.

The sculpture trends in the 90s are mainly the absorption in the Concept Art and the Vanguard Art, which makes the contemporary sculpture to two main lines of realism and vanguard sculpture. But in fact, it’s hard to classify Chen Wenling’s sculptures to either of them. This series of “Red boy”shows a singular self-condition, and transfer the universal humanistic experience to a kind of allegorized self-form. It has no complicated format and narrative theme, but using a styling color and exceedingly exaggerated body action to display the specific topic estate of humanity. Although the singularity in this form of self-representation doesn’t conclude the concept of vanguard sculpture and the reality of realism, it has a stroking visual glamour which arising from the extremity of the critical state.

The series of “Red boy” symbolized the formation of Chen Wenling’s expressing method.One is the allegorical sculpture forms and the other is the manifestations of extreme humanity. His sculptures show earthly values in extremity, and physically generalized various existence of human like extraordinary joy, isolation, hardship and so on.This expression of happy and pain is not a realistic perspective, but an ideal and ultimate manifestation. It emphasized the absolute self condition when he came to some point.

Because of the partiality for extreme spirit, Chen Wenling actually has elevated this condition to a self view which had standard religion color, in order to present his self-condition thoroughly and decrease the elements of conception and narration to its minimum, which employ the soul to a more direct confession. The series of “Red Boy” expresses a kind of one self and the common humanity; the language of his sculpture is mainly his own physique status, which is to show the self-theme, self-condition and self-expression.

The series of “Happy Life” is an important transformation of Chen Wenling’s sculpture career. He changed his self-expression to manifestation of the society and the masses. This change delineates a colony of people’s existence in this consumption society, and the sculpture language is no longer the naive and self-imitational form, but absorbing the elements of folk sculpture, narration and irony style.

In“Happy Life”, Chen Wenling chooses lovely chubby pig and extremely happy person for his two images to make a fictitious daily life. For example,a couple embraced intimately; a flock of pigs doing handstands like acrobats; a gentleman or a housewife holding a plump pig, with a group of little pigs around; a couple riding on the pig, and the husband,holding a chopper and deeply believing that he was on a horse back facing a war; an extraordinary strong fellow grasping a gigantic pig’s head and fighting with it in mind air and a young hunter riding on the pig back viewing with an archaic long tube telescope are all Chen Wenling’s outstanding works. The people and pigs in Chen Wenling’s sculptures are in a terrific self-condition that they feel an excessive happiness or extremely baroque madness of themselves.

In his works, the pigs not only in their actions but also in their self-conditions are highly personated. On the contrary, the persons keep human forms and actions, but their self- condition and mental world are in real pigs’ state. The people and pigs in this series have few differences of each other in posture and inner world. Pigs are close to human and men also to pigs. Actually, this method established a parable relation to the pigs and human beings and the allegory that human are like pigs. On this point, Chen Wenling initiated a symbolized way to express visual form.

Loveliness and absolute happiness are the main characters of this series, which are also a chief feature and value orientation of contemporary spiritual states in the 90s when China comes to a consumption society.Although“Happy Life”continued the expression method of personal extreme state like the “Red Boy”, it exceeded the self-condition and general humanity, transferring to the manifestation of personal socialized status and human nature of the time.

In this series,the interpretation of “Happy Life” is in reality expressed as an extreme but entirely painless optimism. Each pig and person seems to live in a joyful state which has no past or future tone. They tried to make their daily life cute and non-suffering.

Inform, the series of “Happy Life” has more meaning and seemed more profound than “Red Boy”,and it inclined to a social criticism in the theme,because it emphasized on the study of a group. Man and pig join together. For example, pigs wear clothes like people, and their actions are also reminiscent of people, but people’s bodies are presented with pigs in physicality and materiality.  This skill reveals a profound social living condition,behind which he criticizes the ideology in consumer society, like the parochial thought and fetishism in personality.

From the middle of the 90s, contemporary sculptures are focus on the characters in the consumption society. For example, Xu Yihui’s works about McDonald’s, box lunch and other commodities, Liu Liguo and Liu Jianhua’s exhibition of body appetite and flowery appearance; Li Zhanyang’s reflection of recreational ground and arrivistes’ life site and so on.The consumption social culture from its culture idea to its inner experience of downfall was regarded as the critical object of irony theme. But such disclosure is mainly limited to a level of the self’s existence and social ideology.On the point of revealing man’s dissimilation and shrink of personality,Chen Wenling’s “Happy Life” is more deep going, and truly posts the essence of a group’s spiritual states in this time.

“Happy Life”not only exposed the personal essence of a group in this time,but in the language of sculpture also involved many practice both in concept and form. The various formats conclude allegory, narrative sculpture,visual irony, group images and on-location narration.Because he graduated from the Academy of Art and Design, in terms of artistic language, he insists on reforming the folk sculpture to academism, especially learn from the popular postures. Chen Wenling absorbs the comical features of folk figures: for example, fat women,idiotic facial expressions, and puckered lips, which are shown a state of joyous and optimistic in folk Spring Festival pictures and sculptures formerly.This joyous estate was used to show loveliness and painlessness, and in folk custom art, it was essentially an ideality of the bottom people,but in Chen Wenling’s subject, it displayed to an irony of a group’s emotional states.

In terms of artistic language, Chen Wenling’s recent artworks are closer to a type of surrealistic legendary language structure, for instance, people are riding on pigs as if they were riding the pre-historic elephant orpre-historic mammals, they seems to be fighting against pigs just like the heroes struggling against dinosaurs. The recent series blurs the directness of the social metaphor, but is inclined to revealing the preposterous being of the self. Form experience is always a crucial part in Chen Wenling’s sculpture practice, so his recent works are more like an art experiment in artistic language. The series departure the sociality of sculpture and the direct criticism of post-ideology in“Happy Life”. It seems that this brings Chen Wenling back to presenting the human realm of self –indulgence in a circuit.Compared to the universal humanity and the extremeness in “Red Boy”, this time, what Chen Wenling wants to show is not an ideality or imagination which directs the humanity to perfect, but a pessimism and preposterous sense. That is, he attempts to insert a strong element of the self, causing this visual layout to appear still in the midst of a struggle.

Chen Wenling’s sculptures focus on showcasing people in some state of enthusiasm or extreme extraordinary humanness. This became his early form of self-representative language in sculpture, and this self-representative theme was later brought into the context of social issues, where it became a satire directed toward people came to overlade loveliness and animal hedonism in the consumption society. However, irony and criticism seem not Chen Wenling’s single technique,he more wants to have an image of self-struggle and redemption in the level of pessimism.

Red Memory

PengDe, ART&DESIGN, Volume118, 2003.

PengDe is a recognised Chinese Art Critic and also a Professorat Xian Academy of Art.

Red is the colour in fashion - from the Red Devil Cheer Team in South Korea to the usual red uniforms of the European football teams and the various red symbols in China. Throughout Chinese history, red has been a symbolic and auspicious colour. Chen wants to express the tension of money, power,anxiety, fear and cruelty in the adult world. In this Red Boys series, he expresses the dream, the remembrance and the nostalgia of our innocent childhood and a questioning of our adult human culture.

The Red Boys are innocent and not evil, healthy and not sick. It is well known that the visual arts of the late twentieth century, whether in art,cinema or three-dimension cartoon pictures of computer games are full of violence,self doubt and pity. Chen’s Red Boy look like lotus growing out of mud,satisfying the craving for a new trend of avantgarde art -where the exploration of our human nature provides hope rather than act as a weapon of criticism. His works attracted locals, international audience,academics and avant-garde critic alike to appreciate them from their own perspectives.

Chen’s series of the Red Boys, entitled Red Memory, have various meanings and nuances for different modern art viewers. They may be reminded of a newborn baby which symbolizes the innocence of human heart in a classical culture,without any feelings of ordinariness. They may relate the works to the Red Boy of one of Chinese great novels: 'The Journey to the West (Xi You Ji), but without the feeling of an evil spirit.

They may be reminded of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, without a feeling of cruelty. They may be reminded of the war fires in the past in this strategically important China, without any feelings of fear.Those who know Chen may link the Red boys with a very unusual experience. In 1996, there was an astonishing report on the newspaper of the Xiamen daily, entitled “Rare and Courageous Self Defense”. It was reported that a couple was robbed at the beach. The man courageously defended himself and the woman and was stabbed dozens of times. Two main arteries of his wrists were cut open. His body was soaked with blood. It was the bloodiest case in the local criminal history. The article described the heroic action of the young man who survived the attack in detail. He was no other than Mr Chen Wenling. Despite this, Chen shows no trace of hatred in his Red Memory.

Modern art emphasizes the concepts in a work. It often creates a style of too many concepts. In contrast, Chen’s works are simple and true. He does not deliberately create concepts. The naked bodies have nothing to hide. What is left, is a direct communication with nature and a conversation between society and the people. The facial and body expressions of the Red Boys are properly exaggerated to enhance the communicative effects.This series of works is a relief from too many concepts. It can also be viewed that there is a concept in the works to curtail the burden of concepts.

Happy Life Series

Huang Liaoyuan.

Curator, Beijing Art Gallery

The first time seeing Chen Wenling’s artwork, I immediately thought of Fujian province, of the colourful decorative sculptures in ancestor shrines in the Guangzhou and Guangxi regions; they are lively and complex, reminiscent of a fishing family. They have the thick taste of the sea with salty bitterness.

Chen Wenling’s artworks are not extreme. Though they are somewhat strange looking, they are still the sort of work that belong “beside life”. If Li Zhanyang’s pieces are a direct portrayal of life, then Chen Wenling’s must be“twisted patriotism”. Chen Wenling packages the world he sees as a legend,allowing funny looking roles to narrate the beauty and darkness of the world, all with the appearance of high mortality. This is the power of legend, its allows you to grasp the ethical bottom line even as your soul is stirred, to feel the sorrow of worldly emotions, be moved,sigh with emotions, be grateful and sigh.

Chen Wenling is a collector and promulgator of the traditional wisdom and ethics of southern China (especially Fujian, Guangxi and the Guangdong provinces). Among Chinese contemporary art, the study and development of traditional northern wisdom ethics has been limited, however the opposite is true for the study and development of the Southern “subculture”. Yet, even the most outstanding southern artists in China seem to overlook this point,either consciously or not.The reasons for this, in my opinion is the “folkishness” of southern culture (especially in the Fujian, Guangxi and Guangdong regions), they belong to a “rugged mountainous culture”. If we look at it from this point of view, Chen Wenling is unique and distinctive.

The pig is a symbol used by Chen Wenling, in fact the pig is very Chinese,you might not find another country in the world that’s closer to the pig than China. Therefore you might say that the Pig is China.Once you arrive at this, you can basically enjoy Chen Wenling’s work with little trouble.More interestingly, as a Fujianese, Chen Wenling uses the pig as his “primary symbol”. Even though the term “on horseback” (i.e. “immediately”) is a popularly used term in China, horses are in fact not very important in China. In the Western cultural vocabulary, on the other hand, horses are very important. Chen Wenling’s recent works reveal traces of learning from the West. However, in reality they are superficial appearance, his inner strength is still “fisherman ideology" and "pirate philosophy” without any alterations, something which allows his creativity to been riched even while his self-reliant quality is maintained.