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Lot Essay
From the Barbizon School that emerged in France in the mid-1800's, to the photorealism that developed in the US during the late-1960's amidst the mass popularization of photography, Realism as an art movement has developed across centuries and continents. In China, Realism was introduced as an academic model by Xu Beihong after he returned from France in the 1920's to teach in China's academies. Chen Yifei was born in 1946 and attended the Shanghai College of Art where he participated in the legacy of Chinese Realism. As a young, talented artist, Chen was not afraid to draw inspiration from non-traditional art forms such as cinema and popular illustrated books. But the Cultural Revolution launched China into a period of dogmatic Socialist Realism, and he was frequently sent to Beijing to paint major public propaganda works. These were met with wide acclaim, but were also criticised for their interpretive colours that were viewed as 'impressionistic' and 'capitalistic,' and their uncensored realism that revealed the horrors of war. He recalled this time of as the toughest period of his life, both physically and psychologically.
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, China experienced an artistic liberation and a new influx of western influences. An exhibition of the Barbizon School that travelled to Shanghai in the late 1970's greatly impacted Chen, and it was at this point that he decided that he needed to travel to the West to see masterpieces in person in order to complete his artistic training. Thus, at the start of the 1980's Chen moved to New York where he joyfully visited galleries and museums, participated in group exhibitions and worked towards a Master's degree at Hunter College. The photorealist movement taking place in the US at the time provided a fertile ground for Chen's stylistic development. Artists such as Gerhard Richter advocated utilising realist techniques and photographic phenomena in painting, challenging the boundaries of perception and reality. Chen began his Water Village Series in 1982 after returning to China briefly to paint in the area surrounding the Yangtze River, finally finding the visual language he needed to express his outpouring of emotion after years of suppression. His works from this series are beautiful and alluring, glowing with the artist's technical virtuosity in displaying the ephemeral effects of light on different surfaces and at different times of day. Merging realism and photographic phenomena with the values of beauty, mood and spirituality from Chinese art, Chen Yifei developed what the New York Times and Art News called 'Romantic Realism' in their reviews of his 1984 solo exhibition.
Narrow Canal, Suzhou (Lot 116) was purchased by the present owner from Hammer Galleries in 1984 during his second solo exhibition titled "Chen Yifei: Recent Paintings". The luminous, dream-like scenes of waterways were admired in the New York art scene and described in Art News as having "K a pervasive mood of silence and stillnessK frozen in time and space." (Lucy Lim, Art News, 1984 ) Indeed, this stillness is exemplified in Narrow Canal, Suzhou. The silvery surface of the water is represented with such accuracy that its liquidity can almost be grasped, yet the boat's presence leaves the water undisturbed as if time has ceased. The white walls and black tiles of the architecture are cloaked in moody shadows while a ray of light illuminates the centre of the composition, providing a path for the viewer's eyes to enter into the painting. Where the architecture and waterway converge with the horizon, the viewer's eyes are met with trees that are rendered with a blurry quality, expressing a hazy atmosphere playing on the photographic effect of focusing. Furthermore, the scene is painted from an elevated perspective, which creates a heroic air of surveillance. Much like the opening scene of a film, it is almost as if the viewer is gazing down from one of the bridges that appear in many of Chen's paintings. The bridge and canal carried a special significance for Chen. He viewed them as architectural relics of ancient China and symbols of East-West cultural exchange. In this way, Chen's paintings are like bridges and canals, poised between the past and present, the East and West. Narrow Canal, Suzhou shimmers through the dark, its beauty, underscored by dualism, bridges the gap between reality and spirituality, and tradition and modernity in a poetic vision of quiet transcendence.
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, China experienced an artistic liberation and a new influx of western influences. An exhibition of the Barbizon School that travelled to Shanghai in the late 1970's greatly impacted Chen, and it was at this point that he decided that he needed to travel to the West to see masterpieces in person in order to complete his artistic training. Thus, at the start of the 1980's Chen moved to New York where he joyfully visited galleries and museums, participated in group exhibitions and worked towards a Master's degree at Hunter College. The photorealist movement taking place in the US at the time provided a fertile ground for Chen's stylistic development. Artists such as Gerhard Richter advocated utilising realist techniques and photographic phenomena in painting, challenging the boundaries of perception and reality. Chen began his Water Village Series in 1982 after returning to China briefly to paint in the area surrounding the Yangtze River, finally finding the visual language he needed to express his outpouring of emotion after years of suppression. His works from this series are beautiful and alluring, glowing with the artist's technical virtuosity in displaying the ephemeral effects of light on different surfaces and at different times of day. Merging realism and photographic phenomena with the values of beauty, mood and spirituality from Chinese art, Chen Yifei developed what the New York Times and Art News called 'Romantic Realism' in their reviews of his 1984 solo exhibition.
Narrow Canal, Suzhou (Lot 116) was purchased by the present owner from Hammer Galleries in 1984 during his second solo exhibition titled "Chen Yifei: Recent Paintings". The luminous, dream-like scenes of waterways were admired in the New York art scene and described in Art News as having "K a pervasive mood of silence and stillnessK frozen in time and space." (Lucy Lim, Art News, 1984 ) Indeed, this stillness is exemplified in Narrow Canal, Suzhou. The silvery surface of the water is represented with such accuracy that its liquidity can almost be grasped, yet the boat's presence leaves the water undisturbed as if time has ceased. The white walls and black tiles of the architecture are cloaked in moody shadows while a ray of light illuminates the centre of the composition, providing a path for the viewer's eyes to enter into the painting. Where the architecture and waterway converge with the horizon, the viewer's eyes are met with trees that are rendered with a blurry quality, expressing a hazy atmosphere playing on the photographic effect of focusing. Furthermore, the scene is painted from an elevated perspective, which creates a heroic air of surveillance. Much like the opening scene of a film, it is almost as if the viewer is gazing down from one of the bridges that appear in many of Chen's paintings. The bridge and canal carried a special significance for Chen. He viewed them as architectural relics of ancient China and symbols of East-West cultural exchange. In this way, Chen's paintings are like bridges and canals, poised between the past and present, the East and West. Narrow Canal, Suzhou shimmers through the dark, its beauty, underscored by dualism, bridges the gap between reality and spirituality, and tradition and modernity in a poetic vision of quiet transcendence.