K11 Art Foundation and Palais de Tokyo continue their 3-year-collaboration by presenting Chinese young artist Tianzhuo Chen first solo exhibition at Palais de Tokyo in Paris in June this year.
Tianzhuo Chen (born 1985) is one of the most promising artists of his generation.
Tianzhuo Chen’s characters may seem strangely familiar. This is because they are caricatures of our celebrity-filled daily lives. Everything a celebrity says or does becomes a new mythology and creates a new system of beliefs which fans follow blindly.
For his solo exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Tianzhuo Chen is putting together a collection of hitherto unseen works, including a performance with artist and dancer Beio and the artist collective House of Drama from Paris.
Mixing painting, drawing, installation, video and performance, his works incorporate a number of religious symbols into iconographic elements borrowed from several urban subcultures which are shared by a global youth culture. “Art transcends borders; we can’t talk about Chinese art and foreign art. As a young artist, I choose my palette from a globalized world—elements from everyday life I share with artists of my age all around the world” (Tianzhuo Chen)
Powerful and disturbing, his work appears to be something of a psychedelic, allegorical exaggeration of a contemporary society where the frantic pursuit of carnal pleasures meets a general drift towards religious opportunism.
Staged among bright neon lights, Tianzhuo Chen’s work is all about religion and the symbolism associated with it. His recent performances, all highly-choreographed, such as “Picnic” (2014), are something of a ritual in themselves. Far from adopting an over-serious, static approach, removed from the work itself, the artist wants to take his audience to a world vibrant with colour and emotion, not unlike hallucination or meditation, rather than to share a profound philosophy. In 2013, 500 people took part in his “Acid Club” in a remote warehouse. For Tianzhuo Chen, the work was the event itself, the fact he met the seemingly improbable challenge of gathering all these people together for a night of wild partying in the middle of nowhere, where the partygoers becoming fleeting fanatics of a fictional religion.
“Part of what makes Chen’s work interesting is his seeming obliviousness to what is and isn’t appropriate, especially in a country where culture is micromanaged. There’s courage in his creation of weed and masturbation icons, his celebration of bad taste, and his disregard for copyright and religious (and other) sensitivities. When asked the name of the actors who rap in ‘Hip Hop’, Chen says their Chinese names are too boring, too normal. He prefers to call them ALIEN$.“ (Sam Gaskin)
Tianzhuo Chen (b. 1985) works and lives in Beijing, China and graduated with BA in Graphic Design from the Central St Martins College of Art and Design in 2009 and later an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, UK in 2010.
His recent projects include “PICNIC PARADI$E BITCH” at Bank Gallery, Shanghai (2014), “SANKUANZ” (2015) Collection at London Fashion Week (2014), “Tianzhuo Acid Club” at Star Gallery, Beijing (2013), “Kangrinboqê－SANKUANZ” FW2013 Collection at Shanghai Fashion Week, Shanghai, (2013) and Asia Triennale Manchester, Manchester, UK (2011).
Curator: Khairuddin Hori, deputy programming director at Palais de Tokyo
