ARTISTS >  CHEN Wei ｜ 陈维

Chen Wei’s creative and contemplative process consists of searching for and compiling myriad fragments of personal memories, and incorporating inspiration and objects from childhood or fantasies imagined juxtaposed with realities found in modern China. Most of the works are sketched and created on location in the artist’s studio and then photographed, with the end result being less about the camera process as it is about the assembly of the elaborate elements that are captured in his works. The spirit and style of Chen Wei’s photography works also point towards a new generation of emerging Chinese artists born in the 1980’s who are less focused on political history or obvious social criticisms than personal and intellectual freedoms and the individual’s place in a now modern and developed China. History for them has been obscured by economic and social reforms, and the speed and scale of development is the contemporary China they have witnessed.

陈维，这名29的艺术家用他的摄影和布景诠释了对于早期科学和数学、炼丹术、几何和心理学错综而奇幻的想象与追求。动物标本剥制术、破碎的镜子、融化的蜡油、蝙蝠、蜜蜂和遗弃的卧室都成为了艺术家时而梦幻时而梦魇的创作场景。年轻的摄影艺术家以其对细节的独特视角创造出引人入胜的场景，使观赏者惊叹于作品细致入微的叙述结构、奇异的视觉效果以及古灵精怪的美感。在一些作品中，单人的主题（类似于一个疯狂科学家或一个富于激情的诗人）给已显得怪异的场景更增添了孤独和神秘的气氛。

陈维的创作过程颇具冥想和创造风格，他搜寻自己无数的记忆碎片，并结合以源于童年的物件和奇思妙想，以及能在当代中国中找到的生活现状。多数作品是在艺术家的工作室里创作并完成拍摄初稿的，可以说，作品的精彩并非来源于后期的修饰，而是来自于艺术家镜头之中精心的场景组合。同时，陈维摄影作品的风格和主旨也反应出了中国正在崛起的80后艺术家们更多聚焦于于个人的艺术和文化自由，更少关注于政治历史与社会批判的创作风格。对于他们来说，历史因为经济和社会的改革而逐渐模糊，他们正在见证的是当今中国发展的速度和规模。

Framing Impossible Futures:
Chen Wei’s Surreal Documentation and The Demise of Hyperbole
By James Donald - Taipei, 2009
Born in 1980 in Zhejiang Province, Chen Wei’s life was changed forever without him even knowing it. In the four years between the arrest of the notorious Gang of Four and Chen’s birth, Deng Xiaoping had come well on the way to consolidating a push toward reform that would change the future of China. From thereon out, Chen’s artistic fate had been sealed: He had missed out on the Cultural Revolution, the quintessential historical landmark that has shaped contemporary Chinese art for the past decade or more.

Yet, while his age seems at face value to be lost in the cracks of history, it is a culminating point of China’s history where the necessity of opening to the world on its own terms had become not only obvious but imperative.

Now, almost thirty years on, as Chen sees his first Shanghai solo exhibition come to fruition, it is not without a sense of karmic recompense that Chen takes Deng’s place, helping to lead a new epoch of artistic dialogue: A dialogue that will have less to do with sensation, and more to do with opening the door to the possibilities.
Especially the ones that could never have been.

With the pop of the market bubble, out went the hyperbolic esteem of sensational political critique of caricature and farcical simulacra. As prophesied by Colin Chinnery during this September’s art fair ShContemporary, the future is for the avant-guard. Chen is part of an emerging post-cultural revolution. A revolutionary, wholly unlike those of generations past, Chen’s age has begun to concern itself with themes transcending the disarray spawned in the aftermath of Mao Zedong’s disastrous nationwide social experiment.

Chen’s debut Shanghai solo show at m97 Gallery not only captures the development of the artist’s individual oeuvre. Elucidated in these crucial past years, with the rise of photography as a pivotal medium in China’s contemporary art world among the surges and dives of the marketplace, Chen Wei has reared his art at the culminating lip of a definitive revolution in China. Similar to photographers such as his contemporary Ma Liang, Chen doggedly pursues a highly visual aesthetic. Coupled with a fortified brand of symbolism, he has gradually engendered a highly refined sense of minimalism, which has blossomed in his latest series “The Everyday, The Scenery and The Props” (2009).

Chen’s work remains sophisticated, dead-pan, optimistic for things to come. His deliberate enigma is a welcome evolution for the age, contrasting directly with the preceding overt cynicism of his elders. It is through works such as "A Lesson in Weightlessness" that Chen invigorates wonder in a way that has been overlooked among the titans of the day. Among the greater body of his latest work, the "Broken Aquarium," "Entrance of The Garden" and "The Door is Often Kept Closed" project viewers into the post-facto world where things have been tested, and the erosion of clear paradigms is in full swing.

At times Chen’s work can give the impression that one has been transported along the lines of space and time, subject only to anonymity, free to express that which has broken, to feel that which lies beyond immediate capacity, existing purely in the realm of the hypothetical.

In his earlier series “House of Recovery” (2008), where brooding protagonists play in and out of their lives-work, we see Chen’s self-absorbed attention to detail reach its apex. However, it is over the past two years that Chen’s work seems to have taken on a distinctive character of its own. Veering away from the box-methodology depicted in his earlier work, Chen’s lens now pushes his new subjects right up against the wall. It is here that we see Chen at his best. Now we look at a world up-close, and it moves us. A shattered fish tank, deflated soccer balls locked in animal cages, shattered mirrors reclining on folding beds, muddy walls. These are the ambiguous visions of the anonymous inner-space of our subjectivity, locating us on the brink of a self-realization.

Whatever this revelation, whether madness, inspiration, or original vision, further complications can only further invite the avant-guard to play. As shown in the images that grasp at some eternal edifice, their whisper reminds us that now is always too early to tell.


构筑不可能的未来：
陈维超现实的文献和困境夸张法
作家: 崔晓虎 台北, 2009
陈维1980年出生在浙江省，生活就在他始料未及之际被永远地改变了。在臭名昭著的“四人帮”被粉碎后至陈维诞生的四年时间里，邓小平正将中国推向新一轮决定着中国未来命运的改革发展之路。从此，陈维的艺术命运被烙上了封印：他错过了文化大革命，那十年（或者更久）是中国当代艺术成形时期的精华，是中国现代艺术史上的重要分界线。然而，虽然他的年纪尚轻，甚至不足以触及到更多的历史时刻，但那时的中国正迎来一个前所未有的际遇，对外开放的脚步响亮而迫切。

现在，近三十而立的陈维在上海的首次个人展览已臻于圆满。他所扮演的角色如命运所述的善恶轮回，引领了艺术对话新纪元。这并非是一个完全有关于感知的对话，更多的是其对一切未知与可能的预想，特别是对那些原本看似不会发生的可能性。

市场泡沫的破裂使哗众取宠的政治讽刺批判和滑稽夸张喜剧失了宠。也许正如秦思源在此次九月的上海国际当代艺术展中所预测的那样，未来是属于前卫艺术的。陈维正投身于其中的是风起云涌的后现代主义文化变革。完全不同于以前几代革命者的是，陈维那代人已开始试图将自身与时代紧密联系在一起。虽然没有亲身经历过，但对于那个年代，在毛的带领下，人们为了改造旧世界而且迸发出的激情，他们有着自己独到的见解。

此次在m97画廊的陈维首次上海个展，不仅会呈现他在各个艺术时期的作品，从中还可以一览在过去几年中，摄影艺术是如何发展成中国当代艺术市场中一个不可或缺的角色的历程。毋庸置疑，陈维的艺术印证着中国文艺的变革。与同时代的摄影艺术家马良一样，陈维固执地追求视觉上的高度审美，并逐渐形成了一种精致极简的艺术风格，他最新的作品系列《日常,布景与道具》（2009）就是对这类风格的最好的诠释。

陈维的作品秉承着一如既往的精密，甚少感情色彩，然对未知怀持乐观。与先前大张旗鼓的犬儒主义者相比，他的从容不迫顺应了这个时代的变迁。他的作品，如《失重课程》，赋予了那些经常被忽略的日常生活以奇妙的生命力。他的作品，如《破裂的鱼缸》,《花园入口》和《那道门常常是关着的》，将观众带入图像所呈现的事件之中，进而将被侵蚀的范示尽收眼底。

通常陈维的创作会使观众感受到随着空间和时间所形成的轴线，而主题则隐身于其中，透过释放和破裂表达其中的限制，感觉着最直接的内在本质纯粹存在于假定的领域。在《帘布后的偶像》中，窗被风吹开了，模糊的面孔。代表身份的镜子碎片在在一张折叠床上奕奕生辉。陈维在作品中所展露的功力就是揭示往事及未来的假定，并且打破它们一切的可能性。陈维透过行为与界线之中的关系体现了距离的差异。从他的作品暗示着敏感而强烈的议题。他更加早期的系列《康复之屋》（2008）思考了人物在真实生活内外的双重身份，让人犹如置身于一面人生的三棱镜之中。其创作的呈现方式总是细腻而关注着创作本身的，并将细节展现到了极致。

在过去两年的艺术创作中，陈维似乎又逐渐形成了独具一格的风格。离开了幽闭的箱型空间，陈维用他的创作诠释他崭新的视野，在这里我们看见了陈维创作的最好部分。回望《康复之屋》中强调隔离与自身孤立的状态，自此之后的陈维似乎总是徘徊在他不紧不慢的创造之中，当我们近距离观看他所构筑的世界时总会有所触动。

被打碎的鱼缸，动物笼子里的没了气的足球，折叠床上破碎的镜子，泥泞的墙壁。这些意象在我们的主观意识中是晦暗不明的，但确让我们重新省视自我。无论是新发现，还是疯狂，或者是灵感的乍现，甚至是进一步的复杂或许能只能由前卫的观众与作品本身进行互动。陈维的影像似乎总是在低声细语地提醒我们那些未知的令人期待的可能性。