Yi Chen 陈屹
New York-based Chinese artist.
The artist uses culturally mediated images from advertisements and fashion magazines as inspiration for his work. He sees his paintings and collages as metaphors for hybrid, mutated concepts of beauty borne from a global popular culture. These ideas of beauty are formulated in this age of high-speed technology and interconnectedness and transcend country and race. This concept of hybridization and mutation formulate a tense balance in his work, combining enticing beauty and repelling grotesqueries that result in magnetic paintings.
Chen begins his creative process by assembling collages of human (and sometimes mammalian) facial features cut-out from popular fashion magazines. These collages of perfect/imperfect specimens are the foundation of his work. Like an artistic scientist, he disregards race, gender and age and selects individual characteristics and reconstructs them to form a new human species. These collages then become the figurative models for his lushly rendered oil paintings.
Yi Chen was born in Beijing at the end of the Cultural Revolution. He completed his studies at the Affiliated Art High School of Central Art Academy, Beijing in 1995 during China’s economic boom and ‘new cultural revolution’. He received his BFA at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2000 and his MFA at Purchase College State University of New York in 2003. He had a solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York in 2006 and a two-person show at Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York in 2004. He has taken part in group exhibitions at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley Collage, Massachusetts, at the New York Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, New York and at Mark Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles. Chen will also have a solo exhibition later this year at Gallery Beijing Space, Beijing as well take part in a group exhibition at L MD Gallery in Paris, France.
Born in Beijing, China
Lives and works in Queens, NY
Education
2003 MFA, Purchase College State University of New York (SUNY), Purchase, New York, USA
2000 BFA, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
1995 Diploma, Secondary Fine Art School of Central Art Academy, Beijing, China
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2009 Beaut-esque, Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. 04.11 – 5.16. 2009 Gallery Beijing Space, Beijing, China. 09.26 – 12.21.2009
2006 Yi Chen, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY 03.17 – 04.15.2006
2004 The Hybrid, Yi Chen and Ying-Yueh Chuang, Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York, NY 04.15 – 05.15.2004
2003 Local-Global, Organized by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Regent Wall Street Hotel, New York, 11.05.2003 – 01.31.2004
Re-figuration, Recent paintings by Yi Chen and Zhang Yu, Gallery 456, Chinese-American Arts Council New York, 10.24 – 11.26.2003
The New Species, Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery, Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY 11.10 -11.29.2003
2000 Well Dressed, Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD, Halifax, NS, Canada. Fall 2000
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 The Shape of Time; From Micropolis to Metropolis, Yeosu International Art Festival, Jinnam Art and Cultural Center, Yeosu, Korea, 10.2010
2007 Don’t Look (Contemporary Drawings from Martina Yamin Collection), Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, 09.19, 2007 – 12. 9, 2007
Posing, Curated by Andrea Cote and Joelle Jensen, Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, New York, 09.18 – 11.11, 2007
Some Kind of Portrait, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, 06.30 – 07.28, 2007
2006 Materiality, Curated by Erin Abraham, Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York, NY. 06.29 – 08.25.2006
25 Bold Moves, Curated by Simon Watson and Craig Hensala of Scenic, presented by House of Campari, New York, NY. 05.05 – 21, 2006
Reflection/Refraction, Curated by Inhee Iris Moon, 2x13Gallery, New York, NY. 02.09 – 03.04.2006
2005 Mystic Truths, Curated by Scenic/Simon Watson, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL. 06.03 – 07.09.2005
Yet Another Reality, Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 02.21 – 04.08.2005
2004 Corporate Corporeality: Chinese Artists Re-examining the Body in the Global Capitalism, Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York, NY. 03.11 – 04.10.2004
2003 Cultural Narratives Juried Group Show, Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA. 03.07—
03.27.2003
Six Stories, Multicultural Center, Pier 21, Halifax, NS, Canada. Summer. 2003
New York Area MFA Exhibition, Hunter College Time Square Gallery, New York, NY. 02.01—02.22.2003
2002 Once Over, Juried exhibition, 323 West Exhibition Space, New York, NY. 09.06—09.30.2002
Selected Bibliography
2009 “Yi Chen, On Two Extremes,” HiArt, September 2009. p. 136-137
Wang, Si, “Just Perception – Half Illusion, Half Abstraction,” World Metropolitan, October
2009. p. 38
Lin, Jing, “Beijing Kid in New York,” NoArtMagazine, September 2009. p. 98-99
“Yi Chen” Contemporary Art News, November 2009, p. 121
2006 Mullins, Charlotte. Painting People: Figure Painting Today. New York: D.A.P./Distributed
Art Publishers, Inc., 2006
Kraft, Jessica, “One to Watch,” Artkrush.com, September 6, 2006
“Yi Chen,” The New Yorker, April 17, 2006
Johnson, Ken. “The Listings: Yi Chen,” New York Times, April 14, 2006, p. E26
“Art: Yi Chen,” Flavorpill listing, March 2006
2004 Heartney, Eleanor. “Ying-Yueh Chuang and Yi Chen at Plum Blossoms,” Art in America,
June/July 2004, p. 184
