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Lot Essay
Chen Zhen was an artist who brilliantly bridged Chinese aesthetics and philosophies with Western art practices; and Un-interrupted Voice is a work that bears exemplary witness to such quality. This rare example from Chen's Daily Incantation series consists of three wooden chamber pots attached to a board with metal fasteners. The pots instantly resemble Buddhist bells that signal practitioners to their daily prayers, expressing a meditative element and sense of austerity reminiscent of monastic life. At the same time, the pots are a personal symbol for the artist, a reference to a childhood memory where noises from the cleaning of chamber pots were intermingled with mandatory reciting of Mao's Little Red Book. Chen's elevation of the chamber pot to the level of a religious object thus has a decidedly subversive edge, championing the most mundane object of material culture and bodily necessity to evoke a forgotten tradition of worship, meditation and communal ritual.
Chen's works may have their roots in Daoism but his move to Paris in 1986 had a significant impact on his work as he ceased painting to concentrate on mixed media installation. Since leaving China, Chen became increasingly engaged with the disjunction of cultural differences and expectations between East and West. Having later exhibited at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, at the First Shanghai Biennial in 1996, and in venues throughout Europe, Asia and North America, Chen's oeuvre can be seen as a reaction against the cultural ideology of his youth, as well as his struggle to find the spirituality of the old China which he thought had been suppressed under Communism and the Cultural Revolution. By incorporating found objects laden with symbolic meanings, Chen challenged his viewer to immerse himself or herself into his world, a world in which humour and science, and in particular medicine, collide with the mythologies of the East and West. Therefore, despite the simplicity of the materials, Un-interrupted Voice is thick with cultural references and personal history. Un-interrupted Voice ultimately speaks of Chen's desire to heal his audience's world physically, mentally and spiritually.
Chen's works may have their roots in Daoism but his move to Paris in 1986 had a significant impact on his work as he ceased painting to concentrate on mixed media installation. Since leaving China, Chen became increasingly engaged with the disjunction of cultural differences and expectations between East and West. Having later exhibited at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, at the First Shanghai Biennial in 1996, and in venues throughout Europe, Asia and North America, Chen's oeuvre can be seen as a reaction against the cultural ideology of his youth, as well as his struggle to find the spirituality of the old China which he thought had been suppressed under Communism and the Cultural Revolution. By incorporating found objects laden with symbolic meanings, Chen challenged his viewer to immerse himself or herself into his world, a world in which humour and science, and in particular medicine, collide with the mythologies of the East and West. Therefore, despite the simplicity of the materials, Un-interrupted Voice is thick with cultural references and personal history. Un-interrupted Voice ultimately speaks of Chen's desire to heal his audience's world physically, mentally and spiritually.