Putian · Hangzhou · Shanghai

陈彧君

Chen Yujun · b. 1976

Born in 1976 in Putian, Fujian, on a coast where leaving is ordinary. One branch of the family emigrated to Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century, so there are cousins in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Those places, he has said, are as foreign to him as to anyone else: a field of secret experience, not a map for tourists.

He studied comprehensive art at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou: a B.A. in 1999, an M.F.A. in 2007. Arario’s Chinese biography also records teaching there, in comprehensive art and oil painting, from 1999 to 2014. Recent biographies place the life and the work in Shanghai. Earlier notes still say Hangzhou. Both cities belong to the route. In/Space follows Shanghai.

The work uses the feeling between a person and a hometown to think about family, identity, and rooms, especially where leaving is generational. Temporary buildings, mismatched wooden houses, banquet tables, Asia drawn until the border dissolves, the Mulan River which forgets, the house which does not. After 2020 the painting comes forward: L’Étranger, A Midsummer Dream, Time Forest, Growth.

Chen Yufan, his brother, shares some of the early rooms, including White in Hong Kong in 2016 and the Mulan River project. The practice is one person. The family is not.

Putian · Hangzhou · Shanghai

Four footprints

Walk the line. Each footprint is a turn in the life: where he grew up, where he became a student, where he became a teacher, and where the day became the work.

A work of his, standing in. Not a photograph of the house.

Putian · 1976

Grew up

Yuantou village, Huating, by the Mulan River. Red-brick houses, temples, longan trees, and a family that had already sent people to Southeast Asia. The old house was a short walk from the stream.

Also on the record

2010The Empty Room, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing
2012Transitional Room, Boers-Li, Beijing. Mulan River – Unsettled, Zhong Gallery, Berlin.
2013ON|OFF, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Mirror and Shadow, National Gallery of Indonesia.
20148th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale. Space Graphy with Chen Yufan, AYE Gallery, Beijing.
2015The Second Door, James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai. Another Place, Bradbury Building, Los Angeles.
2017Mulan River – Cuò, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel.
2018Mulan River – Voyage, Asia Art Center, Taipei. Visible or Invisible Forms, Kuandu Museum, Taipei.
2023Locality as Universality, Jili International Art Zone, Beijing.

Galleries that hold

Long Museum, Shanghai M+ Sigg Collection Brooklyn Museum LACMA DSL Collection White Rabbit Gallery Guangdong Museum of Art Yuz Museum He Xiangning Art Museum He Art Museum TANK Shanghai Deji Art Museum BMCA