Feng Chen
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