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| Chen Zhen, Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l'écriture, 1991 |
This exhibition is the talk of the town, having attracted
rave reviews in all the Parisian cultural magazines that matter. Ever skeptical
of the French preference for the affected and vacuous, I was ready to be
disappointed. Happily my doubts were unfounded: Chen Zhen’s work and the retrospective
exhibition at Galerie Perrotin deserve every bit of praise they have attracted.
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| Chen Zhen, Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l'écriture, 1991 |
I can’t remember the last time I was so seduced by conceptual
sculptural installations: I wanted to dive headlong and live inside them. I was
touched, mesmerized, challenged and absorbed by all of the installations. I can
still feel them, smell them, even though there was often nothing to smell. This
despite the recurring themes of the body, waste of all kinds, the frequent
burning of paper, wood, wax. Theoretically, there should have been a lot to
smell, but the pieces were as clean as they were provocative. Some of them have
become even more sensually vivid as I sit in my living room a day later. The
materials are related, always tactile, sensuous, gorgeous, filled with colour
and texture, contradiction and impossibility. The sumptuousness of pieces that
are about difficult, often grotesque, morbid topics has a lot to do with the
material he uses. The materials are varied – wax candles, wooden railway
sleepers, alabaster, chairs, animal skin, rubber, abacus beads. And they are
always carefully put together.
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| Chen Zhen, Round Table - Side by Side, 1997 Aerial View |
One of the first pieces we come across is breathtaking. Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l.écriture (1991)
builds a raft from railway sleepers that sandwich books, on a bed of rocks that
we could expect to find by the side of the railway tracks. The old wooden
planks have been inscribed, scarred, graffitied with Chen Zhen’s name and other
personal markings. The piece symbolizes, apparently, a voyage between different
cultures. To me, it symbolized memory, the books once read, the lines once
travelled, and the lives inscribed on the surface. It is also threatening. Long
metal bolts protrude from the wood, making it dangerous as well as held
together. Red paint falls into the carvings in the wood. The smell of another
place, another era, a life lived already and still continuing is pungent in the
room that houses the raft.
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| Chen Zhen, Bibliothèque, 1999-2000 |
Le Chemin/Le Radeau de
l.écriture sets the tone for the pieces to come: everywhere Chen Zhen has
burnt paper, red paint, memories that seem to be hidden in vitrines, in the
grains of the wood, in the beauty of the complicated concepts he develops in
each piece. The sense of workmanship, engineering, the themes of death, waste,
decay, the body and its refuse, bodies and sculptural objects that are
nevertheless clean and materials that are sanitized fill the exhibition spaces
of Galerie Perrotin.
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| Chen Zhen, Beyond the Vulnerability, 1999 |
In one of the most compelling of a whole gallery of
installations that will engage whoever experiences them, Chen Zhen “repurposes”
(strictly speaking recreates) a public toilet in Le Bureau de Change (1996-2004). The constant sound of flushing
pervades the top floor of the gallery space at 76 rue de Turenne, as Chen Zhen
would have it, continually washing away the waste materials of the body and the
mind. He turns the toilet block into a currency exchange bureau – the hidden,
or not so hidden — connections between different kinds of business that take
place in these spaces become frighteningly intertwined.
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| Chen Zhen, Beyond the Vulnerability, 1999 detail |
I loved Chen Zhen’s use of candles to enable children to
imagine, or create images of their architectural environment in Beyond the Vulnerability (1999). He made
houses out of candles, the wax of which was melted, but the wicks left
untouched, to bind the candles. The houses represent the favelas and stilted
shacks that are home to the children of Salvador, in Brazil. The candles are
colourful, alive, transparent like the water that surrounds the children’s
favelas. And they are fragile, always tactile and sensuous. The piece must have
given the children the opportunity to see how beautiful their world was. It may
be fragile and vulnerable like the candles on glass tables, but whatever holds
the houses together is lasting.
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| Chen Zhen, Round Table - Side by Side, 1997 side view |
There are so many pieces in the exhibition that I haven’t
mentioned. Not because they are inferior, more because I had to choose, however
reluctantly. However, I cannot omit mention of Round Table – Side by Side 1997. Chairs of all shapes and sizes,
for children, for adults, oriental and western, are perfectly inserted into the
top of two conjoined, unfinished tables. The piece consumes the greater part of
the space in which it is exhibited, leaving little room for us to walk around,
to find an optimal viewing position, to get comfortable in its presence. The odd
height of the table is immediately unsettling. Because it is chest height, thus
ensuring that we are both tempted to imagine ourselves sitting at the table, as
well as unable to. A man who we shared the gallery space with commented that
the height and the proportions of the tables isolate us in their presence, in the
same way that those who might sit at the tables are isolated from one another,
unable to move because their seat has become a part of the table. This work is
clearly about cultures coming together, but never really finding compatibility,
always isolated and alone in their uniqueness. It is about difference
—different wood, different chairs, different sized sitters—and the uneasiness
of coexistence. Again, the wood, its tactility, the worksmanship, the craft like
care that is taken to make sure everything is at the perfect, if uncomfortable
height, creates a fineness and a vulnerability to Round Table – Side by Side. And yet, it is also sturdy, showing no
signs of physical fragility.
Every year I make a grand claim, and for 2014, this is the
occasion. If there is one exhibition to see this year, Chen Zhen would be it.
Enjoy!
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