| Chen Wen-Ling is one of the artists from a new generation in Chinese contemporary art world. After a year of preparation, his solo exhibition Emergency Exit takes place at Beijing’s Joyart Space. |  |
Huang Du
Chen Wen-Ling is one of the artists from a new generation in Chinese contemporary art world. After a year of preparation, his solo exhibition Emergency Exit takes place at Beijing’s Joyart Space. Two sculptures are on display: one is called What You See Might Not Be Real; the other is called How to Escape. The title of his exhibition Emergency Exit is a profound philosophical proposition, which plays on the ideas of “concept” and “society;” it can mean a safe escape, or social public safety.
Despite the powerful and dynamic exaggeration in his latest two sculptures, Chen has made a bold adjustment in his overall creative thinking. He builds a kind of distinctive and unique art language through hyper-reality in terms of concept, language, and style, surpassing the language system with firm, folk, spectral, and vulgar signals. He then aims at analyzing political economy, and shows great concern for international political and economic issues, putting global financial crisis in the spotlight of visual culture and analysis. The artist chooses the Wall Street Bull and financial con man Madoff as his creative targets. By satirizing this figure, the artist proposes a question for people’s boosting desire in contemporary capitalist society. As a matter of fact, Chen’s work reveals the moral crisis, credibility crisis, and belief crisis behind the visual tokens. This is exactly the essence of Chen Wen-Ling’s aesthetic concept.
