Chucen Chen - "Upside Down"

About the Artist:

Profile picture for Chucen Chen

An artist using printmaking to communicate with all potential mediums, making art in various senses to correspond to personal and global narratives. Always dresses like she is in a grunge rock'n roll band, which is one of her goals.

chucenchen.myportfolio.com

Insta @chucenmakesart

 

 


 

In My Mind

Monoprint on Japanese Paper, 2020, 12" x 19"

print on japanese paper by chucen chen

 

From a Journal 

Video, Sharpie on Paper, Screenprint on Japanese Paper, 2020, 1 min 52 sec 

 

Upside Down

Oil Paint and Charcoal on Canvas, 2020, 36" x 36"

 

A Still From Chaos #8

Photography, 2020

 

The essential principle of my art is authentic self-expression. Pathologically abolishing the contrast between the beautiful and the ugly standards by idealist aesthetics, I create distinct lines with charcoal and sharpie in my works. Without planning, the quick process of my artmaking involves physical manipulation, especially when I am working on large scales. In the painting Upside Down, I create the blurring yet dramatic brushstroke and charcoal graphic by applying mediums and scratching the canvas with my bare hands. Similarly, part of the texture in my monoprint In My Mind comes from touching the plate directly with my fingers. I draw inspiration from my dreams to mix inks—the scarlet, the ebony, and the amber are all colors appear in my dreams constantly; they have been representing the feeling of loss and the pathological disintegration of the personality in my body of art.

 

The self-thematization and self-dramatization are not only represented in my prints and paintings but also included in my photography and writings. My series of photographic self-portraits are inspired by the concept of Egon Schiele’s drawings, which obeys an aesthetic of the mise en scène, whereby the artist is at once director and actor. Consciously staging myself in well-known Chinese movies from the late 90s and early 2000s, which are influential to my aesthetic of art, I am able to achieve the essence of self-expression—the quality of being seen—by the recognized performative character.

 

To develop the relationship between myself and art, I build ambiguity in the narrative. Metaphorical narratives are often used in my written pieces, which is behind the tangled idea of a bipolar cycle of self-assurance and self-doubting. The orange in my work interprets both the color of orange and the orange as fruit. My obsession with the orange comes from Egon Schiele’s work Standing male figure (self-portrait) 1914s, in which he was in a bright orange robe with his fingers crossing, showing his typically linear, twisted, pathological style of art. The metaphorical violence behind peeling an orange is a narrative of memory. Consequently, the rhetoric in my art balances a proper area of intimacy between my personal experience and the viewer.