.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In Encaged Thoughts (Lot 549), Chen offers a nostalgic, romantic ambience through the depiction of dim light, which reminds viewers of the streetlamps in the dark alleys of Shanghai, or the flickering interior candles of a private home. Additionally, the dark background directs the attention to the details of the model's Chinese garb, the caged bird as well as the Eastern wood carvings of the lacquered table. A poignant yet subtle facial expression of the model leaves viewers contemplating on whether her solemn fate could parallel the caged bird within the same frame. With a slightly higher viewpoint and a sense of detachment, Chen depicts the lady lying sorrowfully on the desk, suggesting the complying role of women and their treatment as mere objects in the feudal society.
In the early 80s, Chen moved to New York and started creating various series on waterside villages, musical characters and classical ladies. In 1992, Chen directed a film about the old Shanghai named Old Dream at Sea. Without dialogues between characters, the film is imbued with longingness for home and lingers in nostalgia. A critique commented that 'every frame of the film is an artistic extension of Chen's painting'. This extension is also apparent in Encaged Thoughts completed in 2000. With the atmospheric build-up and an ambiguously dim backdrop, the light is concentrated on the model, not unlike a frame from Wong Kar-Wai's famed film In the Mood for Love, both telling its story through profound facial and eye expression in tranquillity.
Encaged Thoughts is a combination of European realism and Eastern subject matter. The colour technique applied by the artist has created the Romantic Realism style which constructed a perfect poetic conception of tranquillity and melancholy. Dramatic chiaroscuro is employed within the painting, which recalls the techniques of Baroque painters and their desire to focus on one key narrative within the painting. Lingering between dream and reality, contemporary viewers are drawn into a kind of visual travelogue across time and space, one that both idealizes and celebrates the spirit of an era longforgotten, in an effort to bring its essence back into our own.
In the early 80s, Chen moved to New York and started creating various series on waterside villages, musical characters and classical ladies. In 1992, Chen directed a film about the old Shanghai named Old Dream at Sea. Without dialogues between characters, the film is imbued with longingness for home and lingers in nostalgia. A critique commented that 'every frame of the film is an artistic extension of Chen's painting'. This extension is also apparent in Encaged Thoughts completed in 2000. With the atmospheric build-up and an ambiguously dim backdrop, the light is concentrated on the model, not unlike a frame from Wong Kar-Wai's famed film In the Mood for Love, both telling its story through profound facial and eye expression in tranquillity.
Encaged Thoughts is a combination of European realism and Eastern subject matter. The colour technique applied by the artist has created the Romantic Realism style which constructed a perfect poetic conception of tranquillity and melancholy. Dramatic chiaroscuro is employed within the painting, which recalls the techniques of Baroque painters and their desire to focus on one key narrative within the painting. Lingering between dream and reality, contemporary viewers are drawn into a kind of visual travelogue across time and space, one that both idealizes and celebrates the spirit of an era longforgotten, in an effort to bring its essence back into our own.