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Art is always marginal, or ‘gray’, in the social sphere.
I have fallen into the gray race; hence I should be a gray artist.
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陳文驥 CHEN Wenji
以為居中 Make-believe Center, 2021油彩／畫布
Oil on canvas
200 x 200 cmNT$ 2,660,000 -
Marginality is a kind of detached thinking attitude. It has no definitive opponents nor standard constraints.
In this marginal realm, the world can be as big as the universe or as small as an ant's nest.
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陳文驥 CHEN Wenji
時間說 (三聯畫) Time Is (Triptych), 2021油彩／畫布
Oil on canvas
84 x 480 cm, set of 3NT$ 4,800,000 -
Gray is delicate, sensitive and weak. It’s in a state of natural transition.
It is a process of personal experience transcending the earthly world.
It can be said that gray is more artistic, because it opens up a buffer zone between the clashes of society and human nature.
In the gray zone, I am more willing to wait and accept.
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陳文驥 CHEN Wenji
那麼 1600mm So 1600mm, 2021油彩／畫布
Oil on canvas
98 x 160 cmSold -
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Installation views of "CHEN Wenji - ‘21 Exhibition in Taipei"
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I am passionate about exploring the forms of objects in various environments——
An image has too many meanings and allusions that can influence our visual discoveries. It is only by visual elements based on forms can we ensure our visual purity. ‘Form’ allows me to enter the realm of reflection.
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陳文驥 CHEN Wenji
那麼 1800mm So 1800mm, 2021油彩／畫布
Oil on canvas
105 x 180 cmSold -
Images and phenomena, meanings and concepts no longer dominate the construction of my scenes. The attempt to exclude all existing established meanings and concepts is only a response to the doubtfulness caused by my shallow knowledge of the meanings and concepts themselves. It's like a game between knowing and not knowing. Perhaps avoiding the facts is also a smart move. My creative pleasure may very well be built on the in-betweens of right and wrong, of reality and imaginary.
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陳文驥 CHEN Wenji
藍‧對頁 Blue Page to Page, 2020油彩／鋁塑板
Oil on aluminium composite panel
100 x 227 cmSold -
In the process of waiting, I receive inspirations. In keeping a distance, I'm able to find myself. The paradoxical interplay of imagination and reality grants me the artistic momentum to discover everything in a perpetual state of imbalance.
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陳文驥 CHEN Wenji
左｜右 (粉紅) Left | Right (Pink), 2018油彩／鋁塑板
Oil on aluminium composite panel
109.5 x 72 cmNT$ 1,500,000 -
I don't want my creations to be a mere relay of knowledge, thus my works also give people a sense of uncertainty. These uncertainties offer the room for thinking, in which lies a possibility, a future. They belong to me, but also to those who take pleasure in thinking.
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I don't know how hard I've tried, but I've never stopped, much like breathing.
For me, everything can come slowly.
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Born in Shanghai in 1954, CHEN graduated from the Printmaking Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1978. Later he held teaching positions in CAFA’s Printmaking Department (1978-1980), Folk Art Department (1980-1993), and Mural Painting Department (1993-2014) until he retired in 2014. He currently lives and works in Beijing and Yanjiao, Hebei. In 2016, he staged his first exhibition in Taiwan—Chen Wenji: Solo Exhibition in Taipei—at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, where his artistic creations from 2009 to 2016 were on display. And now, he focuses more on the construction of a series of formal vocabulary expressions in this solo exhibition, in which he showcases his powerful visual impact through his continuous purification and refinement of abstract visual vocabularies.
