HdM

2021/1/23-2021/3/13

Chen Han, who graduated from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, has a solid foundation in realistic painting. The heavy volume and the cold  pallet tones constitute an important characterization of his paintings. The content of the picture is often taken from a very dramatic moment in daily life, just like a certain cut-off frame of a movie. The spiritual world from the individual creator is cleverly injected into the various characters portrayed by him.

The scenes in Chen Han's paintings are often a personal space similar to the interior of an apartment, and the image of the protagonist in the painting also mostly shows the characteristics of urban middle-aged people. This makes the imagination of his painting intentions point to a specific group, and the artist seems to also project a certain spiritual situation of the self in the characters in his pen, or the examination and understanding of the middle-aged group including himself.

The dark tones set an unclear tone for the whole picture, like a short film. The protagonists in the corner of the room either ponder alone, communicate with each other, or face each other silently. The artist effectively conveys their inner emotions through the meticulous portrayal of the characters' body postures and facial expressions. It is a complex and true psychology of urban middle-aged people mixed with loneliness, helplessness, alienation, depression, etc status.

The figures or still life in Xie Qi's works are often placed in a kind of light on the stage , showing an inexplicable sense of loneliness in the interweaving of warm and cold tones and the weak light source. After subjective observation and reconstruction, the portrayed object finally appears as a living carrier containing multiple perceptions and rich vitality.

Xie Qi's previous works focused on head portraits in the traditional sense, or body portraits with the human body as the object of depiction. There are no exaggerated external emotional cues, and the calm face of the characters shows a kind of personalized existence in the subtle modal portrayal. The bodies in his pens that have been removed from the real environment and are not dressed are like the pure manifestations of the individual souls without the disguise and not limited by the specific time and space background.

In the treatment of still life, the artist has obviously borrowed the same way of expression as figure painting. The objects in the painting have a dramatic effect even through the environmental atmosphere created by color and light. His depiction of form remains in an ambiguous state between clarity and vagueness, which strengthens a certain emotional tension contained therein.