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In contrast to Chen Yujun’s earlier exhibitions, I, We centres on the artist’s paintings produced after 2020. Organised in reverse chronology, the exhibition foregrounds painting as its primary focus and is divided into three sections: The Outsider, Displaced Spaces, and Nature. This structure highlights the ways in which Chen’s earlier explorations have laid the groundwork for a reconfiguration of time and space within his recent practice, while also tracing the foundational roots and sustenance that the broader body of his work has provided.

In 2009, Chen produced a series titled Asian Ground, whose poetic spaces, atmospheric settings, and distinctive artistic cadence shaped the art world’s first impression of his work. At the time, however, the meaning of “Asia” remained elusive. Several years later, his first solo exhibition in Beijing, Mulan River, offered a more complete narrative - bringing together the histories of his hometown Putian and of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. It was within this body of work that Chen, for the first time, established a direct connection between himself and the figures he depicted.

Subsequently, Mulan River evolved into an ongoing project that traveled to Germany and Israel, carrying with it Chen’s inquiry into the histories of overseas Chinese and migration, and seeking counterparts of “I” and “We” across different regions. In 2019, Chen presented another solo exhibition in Beijing, structured in two parts: one addressing human migration within urban and cultural contexts, and the other exploring the consolation that nature offers in times of historical change. Here, for the first time, “I” and “We” found a spiritual connection through nature.

Several years later, the exhibition Villaging like the Vines situated this connection within a more distant historical framework. Beginning with an ancient village, it traced how humanity, like a vine, has grown and migrated - giving rise to towns and neighbourhoods, to cities and ports, and to the earliest forms of nomadism, seafaring, and diaspora.

The connection between “I” and “We” is also manifested through action. Over the years, Chen has assumed a distinctive role, continuously forging relationships across different fields and communities. His studio functions not only as a home and workplace, but also as a public living room - an open hub for gathering and exchange. His exhibitions have taken place not only in studios, galleries, and museums, but also in village houses in his hometown and other non-art spaces. Their forms vary widely: at times a program, at times a barbershop installed within a museum, or even a public lecture. In short, wherever there is the possibility of connecting diverse communities and expanding the boundaries of art, Chen’s pursuit of “I” and “We” recognises no limits.

These extended explorations of “I and we” have shaped the distinctive trajectory of Chen’s practice. On one hand, his work retains a strong sense of locality and

“childhood accent,” drawing upon the history and present of his hometown Putian - its natural landscapes, everyday rituals, and festive traditions. On the other hand, through a nomadic and migratory mode of working, Chen has remained open within the broader currents of global modernism, absorbing aesthetic, linguistic, and spiritual qualities from diverse regions: the atmosphere of Southeast Asia, the Riversouth (Jiangnan) sensibility of Hangzhou, the colonial vistas of Shanghai, and the hybrid cultures of Los Angeles.

These diverse yet hybrid personal “accents” have also given rise to Chen’s distinctive artistic idiom. His paintings, like a dense forest, encompass multiple media and traverse different fields; they are saturated with information, layered with emotion, and marked by complex structures, making them resistant to description through any fixed stylistic category. In a sense, “complexity” and “density” themselves constitute a defining quality of his practice. In contrast to a world that often seeks clarity and simplicity, Chen’s work insists on multiplicity - where the “I” is accompanied by countless variations of “we,” together forming a pictorial universe that is rich, multidimensional, and diverse.

What, then, has shaped this “childhood accent”? Perhaps the answer lies in the earliest connections between “I” and “We.” Born in Putian, Fujian, Chen never conceived of his hometown as an isolated place; rather, it has always been intricately linked to Southeast Asia and the broader continent. Like the Mulan River that bridges local and distant lands, it carries within it both the internal and the external, the self and the world.

In a sense, I, We is not only the title of the exhibition but also an ongoing inquiry by Chen into his hometown, overseas Chinese, and migration histories. In the present moment, “I” and “We” come together in the form of I, We, forming a closer, more cohesive unit to confront shared circumstances and inseparable destinies. In an era marked by dispersed values and widespread anxiety, in a time when the “future” often seems barren, how might we cultivate a sense of solidarity and interconnectedness?

In his new work, The Outsider, one encounters metaphors reminiscent of Albert Camus. The Algerian-born writer, beneath the life-filled Mediterranean sun, reflected on the meaning of summer in his childhood: “In the summers of Algiers, I realised that the greatest luxury is to preserve, even in poverty, a yearning for a certain way of life.” Those childhood suns, in turn, accompanied Camus through one harsh winter after another.

 

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Chen Yujun’s painting begins with space. Since the 2009 series Asian Ground, the depiction of space and interior scenes has remained a recurring motif throughout his practice. Tracing further back, space already held a particular significance in his childhood. Growing up in Putian, Fujian - a city known for its diaspora - he was surrounded by temples, academies, and ancestral halls. The built environment encompassed not only traditional Minnan-style red-brick houses and courtyard dwellings, but also modern structures with glass curtain walls and projecting balconies, as well as Southeast Asian-inspired arches, shutters, and wrought-iron railings. This heterogeneous assemblage of spaces, blending past and present, East and West, shaped Chen’s distinctive spatial sensibility and provided the earliest sources of inspiration - leaving a profound and lasting influence on his subsequent work.

Space is also an imagination of migration - originating from local memories yet constantly transformed by the shifts of individuals and their times. In 1994, Chen moved to Hangzhou, marking the beginning of his own journey of displacement. The sensations of living away from home, interwoven with memories of the overseas Chinese, would eventually coalesce into Temporary Family years later. This was also the moment when China entered the peak of “globalisation” and “urbanisation,” as both time and space accelerated in flux. Chen’s life, too, underwent new transformations, taking him from Hangzhou to Los Angeles and later to Shanghai. His subsequent 502 Rooms series for the first time shed its “accent,” evolving into an abstract and mutable spatial structure. The migrations of urban space he experienced shaped the very gaze of his paintings, giving rise to a worldview defined by fluidity.

In Chen’s work, space is thus endowed with a distinct social dimension. It is at once a reflection of shifting realities and a vehicle through which the artist pursues exploration and transcendence. The new Outsider series presented in this exhibition continues this trajectory, while also marking a new turning point within his spatial explorations.

In 2020, during the pandemic, Chen remained in Hengdian, Zhejiang. Over the course of three long months, he happened by chance to accompany a friend to visit the city’s most luxurious villa district. Among them, a house known locally as the “King of Villas” left a deep impression. Half-finished and already abandoned, the site resembled a cross-section of an era - preserving traces of how, not long ago, people imagined family life, aesthetics, and the promise of something better. This impression resonated with a broader phenomenon: the proliferation of American, French, and Tuscan styles across Chinese cities, architectural testimonies to an era’s desire for modernisation and internationalisation. They embodied a dream of distant lands, an imagined elsewhere—becoming the initial source of inspiration for the Outsider series.

In the Outsider series, “space” becomes a microcosm of the world - at once a personal inheritance and a site of growth, as well as a reflection of its time and a concrete response within everyday life. Ultimately, its significance points to the ways in which individual existence navigates the shifts of nature, reality, and cultural environments - where settlement and nomadism, change and continuity, coexist.

Yet whether it is a distant space, a vanished space, or a space of inquiry, it must be rooted in the experience of painting in order to crystallise into Chen’s own language and personal mark. Only then can we understand why, in response to these ever-evolving changes, Chen has devoted years to repeated experiments across different media and cross-disciplinary practices - constructing his own ground and ecology in order to achieve a resonance with his time.

In the Outsider paintings, however, the abandoned houses linger with traces of past grandeur, like a faded and mottled canvas or a fairytale of a bygone era, leaving behind shadows of lives once lived. At the same time, one corner has already been overtaken by nature: dense weeds spill into the scene, dissolving the boundary between the human and the natural. In this way, spaces of decline and desolation quietly transform into sites of unrestrained growth, even into a kind of sanctuary.

No matter how times change, things always find new spaces in which to dwell. In certain respects, the spatial memories of his hometown, Putian, have given Chen a sense of vitality. Those hybrid and ambiguous spaces also embody the hope contained within zones of overlap. It is precisely because of this hybridity that they become fertile ground for new growth. And it is because of the outsider’s perspective that stories within these spaces are able to slip beyond established rules, unbound by human prescriptions. The one-way streets imposed by human design are erased, and things return to their original state.

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Chen Yujun’s painting also begins with nature. If the “space” in his work points toward reality, then nature serves as its dreamscape - an extension and a counterbalance to the social dimension.

Unlike landscape painting, which seeks an objective depiction of nature, in Chen’s work nature becomes a symbol of animism, where all things are imbued with spirit. It is the aura that permeates his canvases and the path his art aspires to follow. At the end of this path lies a vision of human order - an “ideal state,” a utopian Peach Blossom Spring.

The spirit and rhythms of nature also reflect the vitality of Chen’s creative response to the changes of his time. In the rainforest, plants undergo cycles of continual renewal, each striving toward the sunlight. Tall canopy trees, by virtue of their height, are the first to seize the light. Vines, lacking the ability to stand upright, have evolved the instinct to cling and climb, twisting upward so that a sprig of green can reach the sun. Beneath the shade, plants that cannot grow tall - such as the bird-of-paradise - rely on sheer vitality, expanding their leaves to capture more light. Some parasitic plants, without soil or a native home, lighten their seeds so they can be carried by the wind; wherever they land, they grow. Their survival strategies mirror the experiences of humans and migrants alike.

Among these forms of life, some rise high, others remain low; some are long, others short - each shimmering with its own vitality. Interwoven and mutually dependent, they form a diverse ecosystem, a network in which all things are interconnected. In other words, in this rapidly changing era, in a world marked by global decline, instability, and conflict, the subtle yet resilient stories of nature offer a structural lesson: a model for growth, freedom, and the cyclical rhythms of time and space.

Similarly, the clustered structures found in nature resonate with the sensibilities and emotions of painting, inspiring Chen’s accumulated visual language over the years - his use of mixed media, collage, mark-making, and layered spatial arrangements. In works such as Forest of Time and A Midsummer Dream, diverse materials and emotional registers converge. The brushwork is dense enough, the structures sufficiently intricate, and the colours combine subtle monotony with bursts of brilliance. The textures on the trunks, adorned with forms reminiscent of organic matter or twisting bodies, evoke the interplay of spirit and time, much like the lingering shadows in Edvard Munch’s work. The fluid brushstrokes and interwoven colour blocks, adhering to one another, convey a drifting, transient emotion. Like a midsummer dream, they grow into a hazy forest suspended between reality and imagination.

The Trees series appears at the beginning, midpoint, and conclusion of the exhibition, like the ever-present memory of home wandering through the show. It reminds us of the multiple spatial layers inherent in nature. The stories of the rainforest, endlessly unfolding, carry a history older than humanity and a perspective on life more enduring. Trees also bear the memories and stylistic nuances of Chen’s childhood. Along the repeatedly referenced Mulan River, tall longan trees stand sentinel. Their trunks, covered with burls, scars, and intricate textures, embody a beauty of imperfection, reflecting Chinese philosophical ideas of “finding beauty in incompleteness” and “creating presence from absence.”

As a subtropical South Asian tree, the longan travelled with the people of Putian across Southeast Asia. Just as the pomegranate symbolises family and reunion for Arabs, or carpets signify home for Persians, the longan tree has become both the roots of overseas Chinese and the light and shadow of their homeland. The twisted forms of old roots and the water-resistant quality of its timber, preserved for years, signify the passage of ancient time amid historical change. Within the processes of nature, the longan tree also stands as a symbol of resilience and tenacity in individual life.

Similarly, at the midpoint of the exhibition, those vine-like, interlacing spaces form its core and roots. They reflect the structure of the show while serving as a metaphor for its emotional resonance. Like the hazy forests in Chen’s paintings, they become a fleeting home for nomads and wanderers - a dwelling of the spirit.

 

Curator: Cui Cancan

September 22, 2025