Upcoming | Sheng Zhang – Solo Exhibition of Chen Yujun

Long Museum (West Bund) presents the large solo exhibition of Chen Yujun entitled “Sheng Zhang” from 31 January to 9 May 2021. It focuses on Chen’s recent socially engaged practice, which includes the cross-boundary experiments completed in collaboration with creators in other sectors, the repeated attempts to construct his native place as the local field, while highlighting the artist’s latest ink-collage series. The mere aim is to give a comprehensive introduction of his evolving language for the plane constitution.

Chen Yujun, Map of Asia No.171013, Collage on paper mounted on silk, 244.5x126.5cm, 2017. Courtesy Long Museum and the Chen Yujun studio.

Responding to the chaotic changes around the globe of the past year, Chen Yujun set the starting point of the “growing” exhibition in a giant mansion that is site-specifically produced. By creating a contradicting atmosphere where the old and the new merge, the rise and fall alter, he metaphorizes the present social-cultural situations. On the one hand, the terraced and sinking space of the gallery under the rendering in the golden tone much resembles a huge and delicate container that bears the extravagance and waste, shining with radiances. On the other hand, the walls of the gallery are painted with distressed detailing of decadences, which seems as having been used over the years, and any material remains may collapse like dust in an instant. However, it is with such spatiotemporal factors that the artist breeds new artistic lives. His artist fellows develop a special landscape together, causing a continuous flow of dynamics in the exhibition. They re-examine the established social-cultural limits, investigate the intrinsic rules of the  metabolic view of the global history when people lose the identification with the collective self, thus opening up a conceptual channel for multiple dialogues, multiple intergrowths, and multiple convergences.

Installation Rendering. Courtesy the Chen Yujun studio.

Next comes the 22-meter-long re-sculpted scene Mulan River that originates from the body of water existing in Chen Yujun’s hometown Putian, Fujian. It is indeed the most significant concept in the artist’s works. The artist and his older brother Chen Yufan initiated the scheme in title of Mulan River in 2007 to transform the long-standing experience of “migrating” or “exiling”, and the related stories of the personal, the familial and the clannish into a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). It extends the geopolitical reach of the place beyond its real borders. Engaging various forms and mediums, they have been rather accomplished in conveying the imagined and fictionized idea of “sailing south” by highly performed and ritualized actions. In 2020, Chen Yujun decided to revisit Mulan River. He has returned to the traditional humanism and once again cultivated the cohesiveness and expressiveness of the local value, while reflecting on the human ecosystem in the post-global era from both the introvert and extrovert perspectives. Together with his team, the artist resided in the vernacular architecture and building complex to collect the elements in different community activities and habits, trying to shape an intermediate narrative that travels between sensory memories. In fact, part of the river has been reformed into a water park, and many households of hybrid exotic styles have been demolished. Therefore, the installation of Mulan River in the exhibition illustrated how the mother water is incarnated in the artist’s mind as a “prototype” or “primitive image” that helps constitute his aesthetic psychological structure.

Installation Rendering. Courtesy the Chen Yujun studio.

More importantly, when making the realistic depictions and symbolic representations of Mulan River, Chen Yujun has developed a set of techniques that superimposes the concrete and abstract, bridging the two divergent qualities into a unified whole. Such a feature is obviously executed in his collages, in which he applies photographs, prints, newspapers as the beginning and later incorporates painting and installation work to process a mixed content.The accumulation of scattered surfaced materials turns into a strong motive force to affect the social-cultural balance. 

The new ink-collage series with the same title as the exhibition “Sheng Zhang” is composed of Chen’s own ink painting on paper. The previous paintings in black and white or colors imitating the same natural scenery are torn down into fragmented pieces, all of which are then juxtaposed, interweaved, progressed, being regenerated just as the metabolism proceeds. The crisscrossed and variegated textures of the collages deeply embodies the artist’s spirit of revolt. He deliberately breaks or dissolves the gap between the mainstream creation and the mass creation in the contemporary art system, providing a fertile ground for “growth”.

Installation Rendering. Courtesy the Chen Yujun studio.

Detail of “Sheng Zhang” Series. Courtesy the Chen Yujun studio.

Detail of “Sheng Zhang” Series. Courtesy the Chen Yujun studio.