Blooming Life- CHEN Cheng-Wei
08 Jun 2019-14 Jul 2019
Information

Forum:2019.06.15 14:30
陳承衛 CHEN Cheng-Wei x 李思賢 LI Szu-Hsien

Overview

Artist Statement

 

My mother’s influence on me is extensive and lasting. Her love fills me with infinite and remarkable energy of positivity.

 

The leaves depicted in my Flower Series are like the patterns of the blossoms of life. The coincidentally similar shapes and intertwining lines have come together to convey the resilient force of life in the images, which are concrete representations containing abstract structures.

 

I feel really fortunate to have observed these elements. In recent years, I have been contemplating on the subjects of spirituality and energy, which are undetectable for the human eye. These elements represent the voice of life that I have perceived, emitting a unique uplifting energy. No matter their colors, they serve as the best expression of affectionate feelings. The oval-shaped leaves, along with layers of overlapping curves, are constituting elements of nature. As these elements visualize the blooming life, they also collectively form the life-giving source I hope to illustrate.

 

Flowers are important to me as they have shown me the splendidness of life and enabled me to perceive the influence of maternal affection. Therefore, I use flowers to pay tribute to mother’s love and paint my homage to mothers with vivid blossoms of life. What I aim to pursue through this new body of work is the beauty of the great love, which manifests as totemic praises in life and is depicted as inner blossoms in my work.

 

As if undergoing a rebirth, my artistic life has been immersed in a fierce, iridescent, mysterious and uplifting burst of energies, sublimating my feelings into the mysterious flowers of life.

 

 

Art Review Excerpt

 

From his training at China Academy of Art to his studies at Central Academy of Fine Arts, from learning from Jin Shang-Yi to being mentored by Yang Fei-Yun, Chen Cheng-Wei has possessed solid skills and emerged as a prominent young oil painter. The path of becoming an artist is always filled with trials and challenges. Chen has reinvented and surpassed himself by relinquishing his old self. From the Autobiography series to Series on the Republic of China, Chen’s work has not only embodied a Rembrandt-esque style but also conveyed his view on himself through transient moments of his own life. Like keeping a visual diary, his paintings serve as documentation of himself at different moments in life. His latest Flower series demonstrates a bold shift as he turns away from his well-known classical subject matters and style, and embraces a vividly expressive modern approach, changing from objective delineation to impressionistic representation. The shift beckons at entering a stage of subjective expression that features inner emotions. The style informed by changes happening in various stages of an artist’s creative journey also reflects different stages of his or her life.

 

Text / LI Szu-Hsien

Art Critic and Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Tunghai University

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