Chen Wenbo
Chen Wenbo, one of the foremost realist painters in China, creates intensely detailed large-scale paintings in bright color. Having made his name with images of Chinese ravers, his practice now largely focuses on hyperrealistic images of the everyday. In Chen's Vitamin series, Chinese club kids (the title is a reference to estacy) are rendered in sensual poses and vivid, surrealistic colors. Their plastic-looking faces are dotted with floating pills in a rainbow of colors, and in this way, Chen offers commentary on the speed of Chinese consumerism and its resulting counterculture in the 1990s.
Since the early 2000s, Chen has turned away from portraiture and toward his own particular brand of still-life, portraying quotidian objects in exquisitely imagined paintings, complete with fantastical perspectives and colors. Chen's paintings of Chinese mahjong boards, egg yolks, matchsticks, and car keys are realized from tilted or swirling vantage points, and the artist casts these otherwise bland subjects in glossy, psychedelic color.
Chen’s work appeared in a solo show at Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, as well as in a traveling show that was exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Kunstmuseum Bern, and the Peabody Essex Museum, among others. His work regularly …
Chen Wenbo, one of the foremost realist painters in China, creates intensely detailed large-scale paintings in bright color. Having made his name with images of Chinese ravers, his practice now largely focuses on hyperrealistic images of the everyday. In Chen's Vitamin series, Chinese club kids (the title is a reference to estacy) are rendered in sensual poses and vivid, surrealistic colors. Their plastic-looking faces are dotted with floating pills in a rainbow of colors, and in this way, Chen offers commentary on the speed of Chinese consumerism and its resulting counterculture in the 1990s.
Since the early 2000s, Chen has turned away from portraiture and toward his own particular brand of still-life, portraying quotidian objects in exquisitely imagined paintings, complete with fantastical perspectives and colors. Chen's paintings of Chinese mahjong boards, egg yolks, matchsticks, and car keys are realized from tilted or swirling vantage points, and the artist casts these otherwise bland subjects in glossy, psychedelic color.
Chen’s work appeared in a solo show at Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, as well as in a traveling show that was exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Kunstmuseum Bern, and the Peabody Essex Museum, among others. His work regularly appears in museum and gallery exhibitions across China, North America, and Europe.
