Being 3 Art Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Chinese artist, Chen Danyang. 

When we look at his works, it is better to first stand five meters away, in order to appreciate their richness in color, then, to step forward one meter to observe the dense and cascading structure, and finally, to come as close as thirty centimeters to examine the highly pure paints. The experiments adopted by the artist can easily bring the viewer into a dilemma between an extremely precise structure and an unpredictable interpretation. 

“Formula-Language” could be a metaphor for our era. “Formula” is an element, and a component for elaboration. People’s daily life is simply self-adjustment and traps in the “formula.” Nobody can determine his/her personal “formula” without contemplating the totality of one’s format. The world is much like a gigantic net—one could see the invisible longitudes and latitudes of the earth from far away, and Beijing’s Jianwai SOHO Complex from close-up. Each one of us is assigned to one of the seats or positions in these formats. Our life unfolds along the coordinate system—no matter if it is spring or winter, if we are wandering on earth or flying in the air. The seeking for memories no longer depends on the shapes of mountains and rivers, and the seeking for directions no longer relies on the guidance of bridges and trees; rather, it relies on the formula through the coordinates, and it is always right here, no matter what. How do we perceive a world of this kind? To let people live in Chen’s “formulaic experiments?” The rigid logical weaving is exactly like walking on the railroad, while exhausting the colors and paints among a world of objects and emotions we used to indulge ourselves in.

Do we have to mix together sweet tastes of innocence and default formulaic traps in order to adjust to the floral fabrics in front of us? Or should we sit down and take a detailed observation towards the deep-end of the images: the vagueness and lost feeling we normally experience after viewing extreme blow-ups of images (traditional film images); the extreme pixels bring us a formulaic construction, and the world only gives us two options to read images. This leads us to think again about genes and the moment universe broke out from the original chaos. Art might just bring some possibilities, so we can weave our dreams into some possible worlds. 

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Being 3 Art Gallery