| Chen Yufei’s paintings provide commentary on the difficulties that contemporary China faces in terms of its rapid urbanization and industrialization. Chen studied painting in Germany in the late 90s, and his visual vocabulary recalls the angst-ridden, fractured compositions of the pre-World War I work of Franz Marc. The artist constructs behemoth transport vehicles (jeeps, SUVs, tractors and airplanes) from Cyclopean rock formations that lend the figures a sculptural quality and give his canvases tremendous depth. |  |
Chen Yufei – Red Gate Gallery
Chen Yufei’s paintings provide commentary on the difficulties that contemporary China faces in terms of its rapid urbanization and industrialization. Chen studied painting in Germany in the late 90s, and his visual vocabulary recalls the angst-ridden, fractured compositions of the pre-World War I work of Franz Marc. The artist constructs behemoth transport vehicles (jeeps, SUVs, tractors and airplanes) from Cyclopean rock formations that lend the figures a sculptural quality and give his canvases tremendous depth.
Chen is from Hefei, the capital of Anhui, one of the least-developed provinces in China. The fossilized emblems of modernity that dominate his canvases convey his ambivalence about China’s rapid progress. Contradictory elements of motion and stagnation embody the paradoxes of China’s vision of the present and future.
By assembling his subject matter from imposing geological forms such as rocky cliffs and glacial ice formations, Chen implies petrifaction on a colossal scale. Simultaneously, the machines of progress are no less daunting in their domination of the compositions. Amidst this conflict, he meticulously balances his figures in what is often an ambiguous space. The result is the expression of an eerily quiet, Herculean struggle—the outcome of which is yet uncertain.
Chen alternates between a jarringly vibrant, jewel-toned palette with crisp distinctions between the images, and a nebulous, wintry monochrome that blurs the transition from the vehicles to the cancerous-looking ice formations that cover them. These opposite approaches convey the same message in two different moods: the former enigmatic and giddily surreal, the latter bleak and chilling.
The description of natural forms recalls Chinese landscape tradition. The richly textured rock surfaces and billowing, cloudy patterns have their roots in the painting of Fan Kuan and Guo Xi. Chen skilfully manipulates these ancient idioms to articulate manufactured objects and to imbue them with a daunting monumentality.
Chen illustrates his mastery of texture with Permanent Stop No. 31. The plunging, airborne automobile is ostensibly pessimistic, but the permanent stillness lent by the stony composition freezes the object in time and space, and is oddly comforting. Painting the vehicle alongside some of the elements taken from the cliff from which it plunged is a further indication of Chen’s wry irony.
Big Traffic System No. 2 exhibits Chen’s ability to blend disparate elements into a balanced yet surreal landscape. A haunting stone face, a jet plane, a van and a covered motorcycle (ubiquitous in Chinese cities) jumble around the perimeters of the composition. Shooting out from the left is an armlike rock formation sporting a wristwatch that punctuates the dead center of the canvas, drawing our attention to the importance of time. The futuristic cityscape of Shanghai floats like the City of Heaven. Chen creates a stop sign with a slash through it to suggest the unrelenting quest for modernity.
Abandoning the warm tones of Big Traffic System, Chen frosts over the SUV in Permanent Stop No. 27. The vehicle appears diseased in the Ice Age landscape. The formations that are hanging off it resemble stalactites as much as they do icicles.
Chen uses his unique visual language to express the uncertainty and paradoxes of China’s hefty strides toward modernization and urbanization. Synthesizing elements of Western oil painting, specifically German Expressionism and guo hua, Chen Yufei portrays the symbols of progress with enigmatic indifference.
