Born in 1983 in Shanxi province, and a graduate of the Department of Fine Art at the Beijing Film Academy, Chen Fei sardonically exploits art history, raiding the canon to mark its otherness. Scavengers (2010), based on John Everett Millais’s iconic Pre-Raphaelite painting Ophelia (1851-2), shows a young woman wading in a forest pond, fishing out Ophelia / Chen Fei’s body (with écorché gut). Xiao Wu Ji (2012), lightly references Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), with a bored shop assistant at an electronics stand. In his new paintings however, Chen Fei’s previously incidental investigations into Western and Eastern art history and practice are developed into a central theme.
Main image: Still from video published by Perrotin in relation to Chen Fei's Fine Art exhibition (7 September–7 October 2017).
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