FOCUS ON: Chinese Contemporary Artists – CHEN ZEN
Chen Zhen was a Chinese artist. He was born in Shanghai in 1955 and he passed away in Paris in 2000.
He was an artist who made of experimentation and philosophy of life his own expression of art.
At the age of twenty-five, Chen Zhen was diagnosed with an incurable illness, an experience which gave him vast insight into the value of time and space at a strong analytical level.
© Galleria Continua San Gimignano – Beijing – Les Moulins – Habana / ADAGP, Parigi / Ph. Chen Zhen | Chen Zhen, Fu Dao / Upside-Down Buddha / Arrival at Good Fortune, 1997. Veduta dell’installazione CCA – Central for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Giappone, 1997
In 1986, after arriving in France, Chen Zhen began to concentrate on installation art. He focused on the relationship between man, consumer, society and nature.
He experimented with a variety of materials; from objects from Shanghai’s humble everyday life, to handmade crystal made in collaboration with experienced Italian craftsmen or simple candles of common use all over the world.
He combined Chinese and Western scientific knowledge and cultural and literal concepts, always juxtaposing them.
From 1991 to 2000, Chen Zhen created a series of works connected with earth. Purification Room is the culminating (final) work of series with this theme.
