CHEN QIULIN

A Thousand Plateaus Art Space is pleased to announce the opening reception of Chen Qiulin Solo Exhibition: The Empty City on September 20th, we will present Chen Qiulin’s recent works between 2010–2014, mainly including one seven-screen video work The Empty City, as well as the related photographs, sculptures and installations. After Art Hong Kong 2012, Honolulu Museum of Art, Houston Contemporary Arts Museum and 4A Contemporary Asian Art Center, it’s the first official exhibition of ‘The Empty City’ series in China. This is also the Chen Qiulin’s first solo exhibition in A Thousand Plateaus Art Space.

Chen Qiulin grew up in Wanzhou City, Chongqing. Most area of the city was submerged in the Yangtze River as the result of The Three Gorges Project in 2003. The torrential rivers in her childhood memory changed into calm lakes, where she had played were submerged under the water, instead, the crazily developing modern city came out... ‘The Empty City’ is a work series created after Chen Qiulin went back to her hometown Wanzhou City. In the project, the seven videos consist of seven related and independent fragments, ‘about memory, about life, about city, about absurdity, about depression, about dream, about reality and the other me in my body. After so many year, it’s the first time I face the real myself, the messy and complicated myself’ (Chen Qiulin). In the meantime, we will also present some video-related photographs and sculptures made from wastepaper (The wastepaper mainly came from text books of the artist’s youth, newspapers, life and work wastepaper, partial textbooks collected from the stricken area of Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, wastepaper collected from the shooting site, etc.. The artist made pulp with the wastepaper, and reshaped the heroes in her memory). Her recent work is a series of triangle hexahedrons made of ceramics. Those white objects are with no emotional tendencies, but from the artist’s unconscious action—folding anything around into triangle hexahedrons.

Chen Qiulin (1975 born in Yichang City, Hubei Province) graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Print Department. She is an outstanding artist of China’s younger generation. Her works concern about the social impact from China’s political and economic reforms. Chen Qiulin constantly summarises and visualises the status quo and various conflicts arising from the challenges of modern life to the traditional value system, and put personal growth experience and memory into her works, which are expressed in sensitive artistic language, shifty media and materials. Chen Qiulin’s works include video, images, installations and sculptures, including a variety of media, her creation has always been in a constant state of development and promotion, in the frequently discussed issues new ideas and perspectives been introduced, and with a unique sensitivity to the social issues, and puts forward a strong doubt on the process and ambitions of social development.

In 2006, Asian Cultural Council (ACC) presented the annual grant, Chen Qiulin was the only Chinese artist who got the honour; In 2008, she and seven outstanding women from other different areas got JP Morgan First Asian World Women Forum Rising Talents Programme Nominee. In 2009, she received the award nominations by the French Consulate to give teaching in Nice contemporary Art Center College of the Arts; the same year, Chen Qiulin got the fourth AAC annual Art of China’s annual influence young artists nomination; Chen Qiulin was also invited by the China Institute (New York), Columbia University, Duke University, Na Shier Museum, University of Manchester, UK Whitworth Art Gallery, Asian Women’s Fund and other organizations to give speeches.

In recent years, Chen Qiulin has participated This is Not For You: Sculptural Discourses, T-BA21 Collection, The 7^th Gwangju Biennale, APT6, Australia, China Power Station Part II, Ⅲ, Ⅳ, The Wall: Two Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition and a series of important international and domestic exhibitions, including a number of influential solo exhibitions in Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Max Protetch Gallery, Long March Space, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum and Honolulu Museum of Art. At the same time in the spring of 2009, she took part in video creative work in key projects of modern dance Rite of Spring in Sino-French cultural exchanges. Her works have been collected by many important art galleries, collections and private collectors in the United States and Europe.