One Game is Over, a New One Begins ( de )
Young Chinese Artists, The Next Generation, Prestel Verlag, 2008-9
“Game Over.” In the Spring of 2008, the Beijing based artist Chen Ke embroidered this resolute statement in red pearls on the lower edge of her work by the same name. Two white-stockinged girl’s legs project into the picture from above and stand on a glowing blue, volcano-like rise. Within glass balls swimming in the lava, gloomy yet romantic landscapes open up. This is the work of someone who has just quit the game.
Chen Ke has been painting her melancholy girl-women since 2004. In her early works she stationed them in the isolation of undefined space, only to later send them into extremely inhospitable fields in search of meaning. Demonstrative refusal to eat, useless weapons, shoulders hanging down, heavy eyelids – Chen Ke sounds out the psychic dynamics of her heroines and portrays them with a kind of trauma aesthetic.
What once belonged to the genre of manga comics now segues into multidimensional art, especially in her most recent pieces. Flecks applied to the canvas fl oat unanchored, becoming insecure bearers of the scenes placed within them. Layers of color over layers of color, breaking up like craquelure, or flowing like wash, allow surfaces just a few centimeters square to achieve their own life.
In the sculpture ensembles With You, I Will Never Feel Lonely (2007) and Quartet (2007), even pieces of furniture become image surfaces. Here modeling paste pours over the backrest of an upholstered chair, there over the body and keys of a toy piano. And every small surface seems populated with Chen Ke’s girls. The prevailing mood of Chen Ke’s works is concentrated in minimalistic gestures: the feelings of loneliness, exposure, and helplessness.
In counterpoint to this dark attitude, she articulates memories of her childhood: “Even as a child I painted a lot. At the time, I felt free, but also sheltered. I could live completely in my own world.” Her works keep these memories alive in the imaginative space of art. Some of the featured pieces of furniture come from her family’s possessions. “But several of them I got at the fl ea market with my mother, because they resemble pieces that we owned before. The things tell stories from my past – the painting appends new stories.”
In the works from 2008, Chen Ke experiments with expressing herself in new media. She has begun to leave whole pieces of the canvas unpainted, coated with a clear glaze. Then she embroiders wave formations and letters into her pictures with fine beads. Where before repeating patterns of doll-like girls’ heads covered the surface we now encounter complex constellations of implied figures. “For me, these new works are like a diary. It’s no longer just about readable picture stories, and it’s also no longer about looking inward. For me, art is like an expedition, and I don’t know where it’s taking me.”
During a visit to her studio, I find three picture books lying open before the unfinished painting Is It Time to Do Something? (2008). One presents classical Chinese landscapes, a second one American landscape photography, and the third is a monograph of C.D. Friedrich. It is astounding how similar the images of dead trees are in each. This endtime symbol has worked its way into Is It Time to Do Something?, only a few centimeters large and huddled beneath a rock formation with hulking masses of stone, like what one sees in Chinese scroll paintings. In front of this background the empty spaces of Chen Ke’s new work attain concreteness just as the unformed space in classical landscape painting provided room for the viewer to rest and reflect. “With C.D. Friedrich’s paintings, the similarity to Chinese landscape painting occurred to me at once. The atmosphere of these paintings also inspires me very much.”
But what Chen Ke shows on the rest of the canvas has very little in common with either Western or Eastern models. Soft pink pours in, complementing the earthy green of the mountains; a snake approaches a small girl. And there again are the fin-like sweeps of beads, covering the whole surface. Chen Ke tells of the various symbolical correspondences she reads into her own painting: the opening, for example, of an exhibit or a play. She doesn’t yet know how the picture will develop. One change she has deliberately implemented: putting the title of the picture within the picture – and in both English and Chinese. To her, intercultural dialogue is important and to foster any language barrier would only be a hindrance. And besides, contemporary Chinese art is no longer a purely Chinese affair.
Parallel to Is It Time to Do Something?, Chen Ke is working on the painting Game Over (2008). The title is again incorporated into the blue-black painting, and we are alarmed by both what we see and what we read. The voice of the artist takes on an aggressive undertone as she speaks of her intention behind this piece: “This picture represents a turning point. I would like to remove myself from the outside turbulence of the art world and other forms of isolation as much as possible. This game is not good for me.” Here, art is becoming the mode of reflection on the external conditions of making art. In Game Over, Chen Ke is articulating a wish for the Chinese art world – with its very young history of success – that is often expressed among the artists of her generation: a return to self-determination. Thematically and technically, the works, which Chen Ke has completed in just the last few months, show that she has already started a new game.
The interview with the artist took place in April 2008 in Beijing. I want to thank Zhao Chong for his efforts as a translator and adviser.
In: Young Chinese Artists. The Next Generation, Editors: Christoph Noe, Xenia Piëch und Cordelia Steiner.
Prestel Publishing September 2008
Hardcover, 296 pages
310 images
