Chen Ching-Yuan graduated from the School of Fine Arts of the Taipei National University of the Arts. Chen was awarded the Outstanding Art Prize at the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2008 and the Kaohsiung Award’s first prize in 2009. His works focus on the dilemma of the unstable and weak perceptions generated when one has to face an uncontrollable and tremendous pressure. He uses his work to explain his connection to today’s society, and creates visual metaphors for a reality which modern people cannot escape.
Subsequent to the 2011 solo exhibition, Chen began making a series of paintings. Mesmerized by artifacts and classical paintings with their accumulated fissures; the layers upon layers of color that reveal a restrained light; and brushstrokes that wrap around the depicted subjects curving and turning with the shape of objects — Chen naturally attempted to express these characteristics in his work. In his readings, he was deeply aware of how brushstrokes and colors in painting all embody a strong temporal aspect. Chen’s paintings do not depict a specific historical event, nor are historical images inserted piecemeal into scenes in the work. Pieces of history are conveyed directly through the nature of the painting. He attempts to render the social atmosphere of the times that envelop individual senses, or to express a more fundamental struggle and contradiction as well as to point out the homogeneity that exists in human history. A fable of individuals and the collective is narrated through these scenes without a definitive link. Perhaps for Chen, this sense of being scattered on the ground approaches his sense of reality.
