‘as an artist, my dream is to become a doctor.
making art is all about looking at oneself,
examining oneself and somehow seeing the world.’
so said chen zhen, who died in 2000 from a rare
medical condition known as autoimmune hemolytic
anemia. at the age of 25 he began to suffer from
this anaemia and was given a prognosis of five
years. confused he spent three months living with
tibetan monks in a non-materialistic environment.
his experience in tibet strengthened him physically
and spiritually, providing him with inspiration,
energy, and insight into life that fed his creativity.
from early on it gave him a keen understanding and
analytic perspective on the value of time and space.

both of chen's parents were medical doctors, and
also chen started first to study medicine.
the understanding of his disease as an integral part
of his being influenced all his considerations as an artist.
he interwove aspects of his self-chosen exile,
the human body, his illness, and chinese medical
practices as metaphors to explore the complex and
sometimes paradoxical interplay between the material
and the spiritual, the communal and the individual,
between inside and out.

most of the works featured on this page are dated 2000,
the year of his death.

--
‘crystal landscape of inner body’
chen zhen made eleven crystal organs and arranged
them on a surgical bed to form an interior landscape in
crystal’. the external landscape is reflected in the
crystal surface of the interior landscape of the body,
underlining the relationship between internal and external
causes, between the human body and society.
however, it also reveals the value of life and how fragile
it is.
chen zhen wrote: ‘when you feel ill it’s already too late.
it’s better not to get ill (that is, to prevent);
this is my recipe’.

‘field of synergy’
in this work, through sight it is possible to experience
the magnetic field of an unusual vital energy.
using children’s beds symbolically to represent innocence,
chen zhen underlines the marked contrast with the adult
world, which is full of desires and contradictions and
where people are endlessly striving for power and money.
he uses the child’s bed to represent the human body,
and also metaphorically to represent the object of desires
and dreams, of human vicissitudes, and to emphasize the
organic link between society and the human body.
he exhorts people not to ignore the origin of social
disorders while they are preoccupied with their physical
disorders.

‘six routes - souffrance’
(six ways - sufferance)
it is a similar approach as ‘field of energy’.
it describes the buddhist expression of the six
principal senses of our body, the six states of being
and human contraddiction.

‘cocon du vide’
(empty cocoon)
a third project, this is made of a chinese abacus
buddhist rosary beads, wooden highchair,
brass prayer bell and metal.

‘bibliotheque musicale’
emits a recording of the sound produced by chamber
pots being cleaned by women in busy shanghai streets
each morning. through sound his works emphasize
the chinese character ‘Xi’ (washing) -
an action that ranges from the bodily (washing of the blood
and intestine) to the spiritual (purification of the soul and
of culture). chen zhen introduced natural elements
such as ‘water’, ‘earth’ and ‘fire’ into his works in order
to create a metaphysical space where objects and
nature can interact, and to remind people living in this
materialistic, conflict-ridden world of the need for
introspective analysis.

‘exciting delivery’
chen zhen’s 1999 installation is a reference to a typical
chinese heavenly dragon, made of interwoven bicycle
tires and on the strands of bicycle inner-tubes,
lined up on these tubes as if they were roads,
we see an innumerable hoard of toy cars as if they were
parasites on the dragon’s skin.
painted black and seated on a triangle made by three
bicycle wheels.
‘exciting delivery’ can also be seen as a large black
kidney with parasites in this context.
the bicycle and the dragon are features of chinese
identity: while the heavenly dragon is an ancient cultural
symbol, the bicycle may be an indication of maoist
modernity, which is linked with the car as a symbol of
western affluent society. the emerging forms, critically
hint at the social change brought about by economic
and cultural association with the west.
having moved to the west, chen zhen's cross-cultural
experiences made him realize that both the abundance
of consumer goods and the ecological imbalance
were by-products of capitalism and that man's endless
pursuit of material wealth could only result in ecological
disaster.

‘black broom’
a homely broom is made monstrous and threatening by
replacing the brush with black transfusion tubing and
hypodermic needles, by blowing the whole up to huge
proportions. ‘black broom’ is evoking the lure of a
woman's hair but also the horror of medical intervention
into our bodies.