Feng Chen
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2022
Capsule Shanghai
Capsule Shanghai is pleased to present a solo project by Chinese artist Feng Chen at Liste Art Fair Basel 2022, featuring his recent carbon fiber three-dimensional drawings and photographic works.
Feng Chen | Huh | 2022 | carbon fiber drawing | 130 x 72 x 30 cm; 100 x 22 x 37 cm
Tenacious, malleable and incredibly light, carbon fiber has become Feng Chen’s choice of raw material when creating sculptures for it grants a liberating sense of autonomy, freeing him from traditional working pattern of sculpture making to explore on his own. Continuing to push the material’s limit, Feng Chen has expanded on his investigation of carbon fiber for the past few years with this new group of works, which showcases new possibilities with the integration of gold and silver foil for visual vitality, and other additional materials for enhanced durability and tensility.
Feng Chen | Aha | 2022 | carbon fiber drawing | 128 x 100 x 50 cm
Starting with sketches on paper, Feng Chen transforms two-dimensional lines into carbon fiber structures that occupy and activate the three-dimensional space. What disguise themselves as paint strokes on the wall at a first glance begin to morph and reveal their subtle volume in space as the viewer walks around the works and shifts viewpoints. Realized over a weeks-long hand-making process, each abstracted component of a circle, a curve or a line were subsequently joined together to constitute a single piece of work, that, from a certain angle, is potentially reminiscent of a face, a galaxy, a giant ...
The viewer finds themselves in another game of trickery in front of the photographs. While their preconceptions may lead them to assume that the photos are digitally generated as the images barely resemble any recognizable object in the physical world, and photography is commonly (but mistakenly) believed to document reality, the material “gelatin silver print” dismisses the assumption. These unique black-and-white prints are realized in a darkroom using one of the most traditional photo-printing processes, starting with exposing light on photographic paper.
Nevertheless, here the light source is laser beams that are programmed to shift with sound patterns randomly generated by a synthesizer, and exposed directly onto light-sensitive paper in a camera-less process. Similar to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographic series Lightning Fields, where he applied an electrostatic generator directly onto film, Feng Chen translates invisible signals into images by creating these “portraits of sounds”. The photos inspire an open-minded way of understanding the world around us as a new dimension may emerge when perceived with a different sense.
The works on view exemplify Feng Chen’s broader practice across multiple mediums in querying our habitual reliance and trust in the senses. In the spirit of the works, we are encouraged to embrace the perceived reality with curiosity, experiment and a sense of humor. Afterall, as the artist advocates, experience is the most essential and authentic part of existence and the ultimate nature of reality.
Feng Chen creates videos, sculptures and hypnotic installations that investigate the synchronization between visuals and audio, inserting a wedge between different signals and leading us to question which of our senses we should ultimately trust. In his work, perception and reality interact with each other in labyrinthine ways reclaiming that experience is the most essential and authentic part of existence and the ultimate nature of reality.
Feng Chen was born in 1986 in Wuhan, China. He graduated from the Department of New Media Art of the China Academy of Art in 2009, and in 2 ...
Established in late 2016, Capsule Shanghai is based in Shanghai’s central Xuhui District. Situated on the first floor of a picturesque 1930s garden house in the idyllic greenery of the former French Concession, the gallery works primarily with emerging artists who push the boundaries of contemporary art. The gallery’s special focus is on artists who have personally and professionally migrated between regions, creating unique trans-national and trans-regional links.
From its inception, Capsule Shanghai sought to work with artists from China or artists who have established a professional footho ...
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2020
1986
China
Capsule Shanghai
Feng Chen was born in 1986 in Wuhan, China. He graduated from the Department of New Media Art of the China Academy of Art in 2009, and in 2014 he joined a two-year program at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (Netherlands). He currently lives and works in Hangzhou, China.
His solo exhibitions Feng Chen Solo Show and Moment by Moment have been presented in 2017 and in 2019 at Capsule Shanghai (Shanghai, China). In 2018 he participated at Art Basel Hong Kong Discoveries with the solo project The Darker Side of Light - Color (Hong Kong, China). Recent group shows include The 6th Guangzhou Triennial - As We May Think: Feedforward (Guangzhou, China), City Unbounded - Shanghai Jing'an International Sculpture Project (Shanghai, China), and 8102 - On Reality at the OCAT Shanghai (Shanghai, China) in 2018.
Feng's institutional collections include the White Rabbit Contemporary Art Collection in Australia, the China Art Museum and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten.
His work has been written about on Artforum, Randian, Art China and Flash Art.
Feng Chen creates videos, sculptures and hypnotic installations that investigate the synchronization between visuals and audio, inserting a wedge between different signals and leading us to question which of our senses we should ultimately trust. In his work, perception and reality interact with each other in labyrinthine ways reclaiming that experience is the most essential and authentic part of existence and the ultimate nature of reality.
For the 2020 edition of Liste Showtime, Capsule Shanghai presents three works representative of Feng Chen's practice: a multimedia installation, a sculpture and photo work.
The Darker Side of Light: Convulsion includes a three-channel video (Convulsion) and a program that synchronizes the videos with an installation of multiple sets of window blinds (The Darker Side of Light). Since the multimedia installation is site-specific, the window blinds are not included and may be customized according to the specific layout of the location where it is presented.
In previous installations, viewers had intimate viewing experiences of interacting with the installation through personal headphones. However, this is subject to change depending on th ...
Convulsion | three-channel video installation | #1: 5'06''
The Darker Side of Light is an on-going project that has been presented in multiple iterations, each time constructing automated systems that dissects our perception of body and space and new reflections on the relationship between man and machine.
The experimental installation presented at Liste Showtime, originally planned for the rooms of the Werkraum Warteck, consists of various mechanized operations including digital monitors of various sizes placed throughout the room displaying images of body parts pulsating rhythmically to synchronized noises such as sounds from nature, a slap, or electronic responses (Convulsion, 2017, three-channel synchronized video installation). Additionally, at times, the audio desynchronizes with the visual imagery in small, noticeable degrees.
In The Darker Side of Light: Convulsion, Feng Chen combines the video installation with an immersive installation of automated flickering window blinds reacting to the pulsing sounds of the videos. In a sense, the flickering blinds create a visual representation of the audio feedback allowing viewers to have synesthetic responses to the audio-visual stimuli and causing light to concurrently flash and diminish throughout the room.
Subsequently, the room becomes a sensory spectacle of unnatural visual, audio, and physical relationships that viewers interact with on a sensory and bodily level. Although initially eerie, the installation calmly overloads a viewer’s senses; creating a slow read of the work to understand the numerous relationships implied.
"My works would adjust to the exhibition context each time they are presented, for instance, 'The Darker Side of Light' was shown in three different fashions at OCAT Shanghai, Jing'an International Sculpture Exhibition, and the Guangzhou Triennial." -- Feng Chen
"These carbon fiber sculptures have turned me into a "lighting maniac", as I would constantly adjust the light to ascertain its even luminosity. The carbon fiber sculptures had an uneven surface once they were first finished, they had prickly thorns on the surface. So, I polished them somewhat, then I had to control myself. I am afraid of becoming a mechanical maniac, where everything is immaculate and beautiful." -- Feng Chen
Starting from 2016, Feng Chen has been developing a series of sculptures that employ contemporary technology in the characteristically light, but tensile carbon fiber. Bees belongs to a specific series called Architecture. The properties of carbon fiber, such as high stiffness, high tensile strength, and low weight, makes it very popular in aerospace, civil engineering, military, and motorsports. Nevertheless, it is a material that still requires craftsmanship and the process of turning it into an extremely rigid form may only be hand-made.
In the series, Feng uses carbon fiber combined with plastic resin to turn the malleable fiber onto a sculptural form.
The title Bees refers to the formal shape of the carbon sculptures’ form resembling that of a beehive. Similarly, the sculpture is constructed with a sense of natural logic juxtaposed with modern ingenuity. The sculpture may be hung either horizontally or vertically with a sense of etherealness.
Bees | installation view at Jing'an Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China
"Water is random and uncertain... I wanted to photograph water" -- Feng Chen
Feng Chen’s series titled, Between 20Hz-30Hz consists of a series of giclée archival prints. The photographic prints document the natural phenomena of water’s visual interaction with audio frequencies between 20 Hertz and 30 Hertz. The work creates a synesthetic visual representation of a spectacle otherwise imperceptible. Consequently, the resulting prints resemble organic tessellations created through artificial means to explore the relationship between imagery and sound.
Between 20hz-30hz Series
The series Between 20hz-30hz includes 11 pictures in total, all differing from each other and capturing stills of the water surface moved by sound waves under different light exposure.
PRESS
2017 | Artforum Exhibition Review 'Feng Chen Solo Show' by Bruce Bo Ding
2017 | Randian Exhibition Review 'Feng Chen Solo Show' by Banyi Huang