CHEN ZIHAO

In Chen Zihao’s recent oeuvre, materials such as thin, craggy rocks, metal, and minerals, or highly saturated blocks of colour are inserted into the textures of abstract oil paintings placed within frames of iron, wood, copper, stainless steel, and coloured acrylic. The artist calls these brightly-coloured works ‘land art in 2.5 dimensions.’ This ‘2.5 dimensions’ is a humorous turn of phrase, as the works are not the dimensional descent of three-dimensional reality described in science fiction. Chen Zihao primarily uses oil painting to record multiple landscapes that are not present; these works are obviously different from, but still, reference land art. Chen describes the various magnificent scenes that he has experienced, and after re-awakening those memories, he uses thick brushstrokes to present geographic textures, creating Informe-style works. His images are often birds-eye views, with connecting and overlapping blocks of colour, as if layering the patterns of the earth and the colours of the sky based on his own change in perspective.

By combining painterly expressions and found objects, Chen Zihao adjusts the formal language to achieve his goal. The artist often sees the objects, such as stones, as overlapping objects that stand at the intersection of the experiences of different individuals and communities. The objects in the works are coordinates, portals as well as breaches. This understanding comes from individual experiences or memories, but it also stems from narratives of globalisation and interstellar colonies, whether real or fictional. In the history of visual practice, artists in diaspora have multiple worldviews, and they have changed modernism and later visual languages, just as the aspects of Chen’s multicultural expressions, such as knowledge and capital, have.

^{Curated by Sun Wenjie.}

Press release courtesy Tang Contemporary Art.