[Review] Jonathan Goodman：Shen Chen——In Thrall to No One（2010）

One of the most long-lasting, pernicious effects of Western culture's response to contemporary Asian painting is its tendency to see the work of Chinese and other artists as inherently indebted to the West. lf there is a drip or spatter anywhere in an Asian painting, suddenly the ghost of Jackson Pollock appears, for he is the god of the drip. This is not so facetious a statement as it might seem at first--as an going New York critic of Chinese art, and as someone who has given many critiques in college classes, I have found myself, despite my best intentions, subjecting foreign-born painters to interpretations that convey a bias toward the West. But what if such a reading were not true-what if Chinese painters actually were influenced more by their training in ink-and-paper painting and calligraphy than by twentieth-century American art? It is more than a bit imperial to read Chinese culture in light of foreign influence. Especially when the tradition of Chinese painting is not only great (and itself imperial) but also has worked out, sometimes hundreds of years ago, a language that seems to anticipate the inflections of Abstract Expressionism without being beholden to it.

Of course, there are also instances when the reverse is true - we have only to think of Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline, who seems to have been taken with Chinese calligraphy even though he denied its effect on his art. Most likely, the problem lies with the perception of the influence rather than the influence itself. We may be looking at visual effects that resonate with both the artist's own culture and that of his current place of work; it makes sense, especially in New York, where so many artists come from other countries, that hybridity may best describe the current situation of most contemporary art. Of' course, too, in a global culture, information travels easily all over the world, so that faraway places have access to images from major curies for art. (We remember that the noted Chinese artist Xu Bing wrote his master's thesis on serial repetition in Andy Warhol's art more than a generation ago; when I asked him how he got his materials, he replied that the Western art magazines were available at his school.) In fact, the term "hybridity" may already be shopworn by now-in shows of young artists these days, it has become increasingly difficult to know their nationality, especially when it appears to have no visible influence on their art.

That means most of the art world is pushing in the direction of an international style that is not indebted to any particular culture circumstances may, or may not, offer specific insights - sculptor Ming Fay, who has been in New York for more than twenty-five years, makes art that relates to his birth and upbringing in Shanghai, even though he sees himself as a New York artist. There is no inherent contradiction in a double allegiance, especially when it reflects the lived experience of someone. What counts, finally, is the effectiveness of Ming Fay's or indeed any artist's work in question. Cultural bias has become something artists consciously decide upon. At this point in time, current awareness of differing influences is so high that we cannot say that a particular style is innocently assimilated- even when the artist claims that his bias is unconscious.

Will we soon be hard pressed to say whether an artwork is Asian or Western? My own feeling is that these categories will continue to have force in differentiating works of art. But many of the smaller differences look as if they are going to fall away from artistic discussion, in the last twenty years, Chinese artists have reinvigorated Western art methods by infusing them with Chinese content. As a result, one can confidently say the work is Chinese, even if that work owes its form to another culture, – for example, the performance art of Zhang Huan, Whose processes go back to New York art of the 1960s and 70s, performance and conceptual and conceptual art in particular.

In the case of someone like Zhang Huan, it is relatively easy to see how western influence has modified Asian content. But in painting, we note that the traditions - indeed, the very materials - are so different that it proves hard to argue that Asian and Western painting can be merged. Even so, there are Chinese artists who have undertaken the arduous journey of working abstractly, both in Asia and in the West. New York-based artist Shen Chen is one of them. Now in mid-career, Shen has lived in New York for more than twenty years. He makes paintings that are subtle, often monochromatic. It would be easy to place him within the New York School, an affiliation the artist himself would not deny given his long stay in America. But is that the most accurate way of describing his aesthetic interests? Wouldn't it be better to place his art within the current experience of multiple cultural associations? If we look at the first part of his development, we see that Shen early on was interested in making art. He began painting while still a young child. In junior high school, during the Cultural Revolution, Shen helped his teacher paint big billboards and make slogans. In high school, he led an art group and regularly won first prize in the yearly exhibitions of student artwork. In 1973 he avoided being sent into a manufacturing job; instead, he enrolled in the Shanghai Art College, where he received some technical training. Although he worked very hard at his painting, inside and outside the academy, his focus on art was seen as politically suspect during the Cultural Revolution, a time when artistic expression was generally distrusted as being bourgeois.

Once the universities reopened after having been shut down for more than a decade during the Cultural Revolution, Shen returned to art school, He moved to the Shanghai Academy of Theater in 1978. There he found the time to curate and participate in a show, entitled Wild Rose, held in the school's auditorium; Shen describes it as one of the earliest experimental art shows in Shanghai. His work was also shown at the Shanghai Museum of.  Art. In 1981, Shen organized the show New Painting at the Ningbo Museum of Art. A year Iater, he received his B.F.A. and moved to Beijing, where he had solo shows in several different venues. Participating as well in many group shows. Shen became one of the most active and highly regarded "underground" Contemporary artists in China during the 1980s.

As Shen's practice developed, the yearning to go abroad grew stronger and stronger and, as he says, "One of my desires as an active young artist was to study and explore Western art in person.’’ Ultimately he decided that leaving China was a necessity. In 1988, Shen received a fellowship from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, additionally receiving an exchange student scholarship from the New York Studio School. After studying there, Shen went to graduate school at Boston University, receiving his M.F.A. in 1991. Following his stay in Boston, he decided to move to New York, where he continues to work (in Queens) to this day. When Shen went to Skowhegan in Maine, he was thirty-three years old, and he did not look back. Once in New York, he exhibited his ink paintings in a show called Beijing-New York Exchange, an exhibition of contemporary Chinese and American art held at Snug Harbor in Staten Island and at Nielsen Gallery in Boston. Under the advice of noted American painter John Walker, Shen began to work on paper and canvas with mixed media at the New York Studio School. Shen comments, "I was fascinated in learning new materials and exploring new methods in order to develop my ideas and directions.”

Shen's long stay in America has had the effect of complicating his understanding of himself.  As the artist comments:

Biologically, I am a Chinese person; however, l might not be a one hundred percent Chinese any more. The affiliations of' my identity also are reflected in my paintings. Asked by an American friend where I stood. I told him that my works reflect mixed cultures-both classical Chinese painting (literati painting in particular; and Western art. At the same time, l'd say that my painting is very different from the so-called "Chinese" painting promoted by many today. It is also different from the Western painting we are familiar with.

It is complicated, and at times nearly comical, to contemplate Shen's identity as an artist--primarily because his independence can encourage absurd readings of his art. Easily misread by critics eager to categorize his work. Shen nonchalantly refuses to affiliate with a particular culture or past. Indeed, as Shen points out, most of the time he doesn't think it is necessary to identify himself:

I am more concerned that I am an artist in general. I may be Chinese by birth, but I did not choose my background. I am more interested in self-expression. Once when a friend of mine gave students two images, one by myself, one by Brice Marden. They thought my work was Western, and that Marden's was Chinese. This is a good example of misreading cultural identity; remember that I do not intend to deny my identity.

While Shen openly acknowledges his influences, he also realizes that he lost some part of himself. Yet he views the situation positively; he sees his lost identity as a step that enabled him to gain creative freedom. Like more than a few New York artists, he sees his situation as global: "I have always believed that genuinely contemporary or avant-garde art must be international in nature and transcend any culture."

Abstraction has turned out to be Shen”s predominant style. He began working with abstraction in 1982, at the age of twenty-six, when he had just graduated from the Shanghai Academy of Theater. He acknowledges that most of the works he produced in China are ink paintings; however, unlike other Chinese artists of that time, he was also studying Western painting. In a quotation that reflects the complex reality of his aesthetic, he observes: "Sometimes I deconstructed calligraphy and recomposed it with emotional action. Emphasizing the philosophy of 'empty but full, full but empty’ in my work, I left a lot of open space [white paper] in my earlier works; later, I reversed the process leaving no air at all."

Shen allows that, in his early years, he was "strongly" influenced by Abstract Expressionism; American artists he looked at, through reproductions, include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning. Yet Shen asserts as well that he got his inspiration through Chinese calligraphy, remarking that "the two groups of imagery [Asian and Western] were linked by color, the emotional quality of the stroke, and the structure of the imagery." While Shen's previous works are deeply rooted in calligraphic strokes – specifically, the rhythm of the brush - the two major legacies, one from China and the other from New York, were clearly influential in his development. Shen explains that his appropriations have more to do with spiritual than imagistic legacies: "Although I have had a long-term friendship with David Reed [the abstract painter in New York], as well as a short period of study with John Walker [another American painter], who gave me advice, I would say that their spiritual influence is stronger than their artistic influence."

While Shen's technique demonstrates a thorough familiarity with Western and Asian painting, he is aware that his practice is idiosyncratic in the sense that it reflects the melding of different kinds of styles; at the same time, he makes use of what he learned in China:

When I paint, l put my canvas down on the floor so that I can work on a flat surface. This is because I use flat Chinese brushes, which contain enough water to mix paints; thus, I am able to make big strokes. I make lines that are created by two strokes that overlap each other just beyond the edges, or the strokes are separated by a space. I use flat strokes and sometimes sidestrokes, which are made by using the side edge of the brush-this is a typical Chinese painting technique. The work embodies the continuation of time and the repetition of the brushstrokes.

The many layers - sometimes more than one hundred - Shen requires to make his painting lends a meditative calm to both the final product and the process responsible for it. Shens procedure is subject to a Zen-like awareness, in which the artist takes note of the efforts leading to the finished painting; the steps necessary to completing the work of art become as important as what we finally see. Repetition results in heightened consciousness. According to Shen, the highest level of Zen aesthetics involves sensing the emptiness of our inner mind and entering a spiritual world. His system requires patience and considerable effort-qualities that register as desirable in their own right, as well as being in the service of art. Shen has to wait for each stroke to dry completely, and so it takes quite a long time to finish a painting--from three to five weeks, and in some cases even longer than two months. Because the layers of paint are so thin, mistakes cannot be corrected.

Working in abstraction for more than twenty years, Shen at first was considered an outsider. In China, he belonged to a small group, an "underground art salon" that included young artists, poets, musicians, and filmmakers who did not belong to the government-controlled art system. Interestingly enough, his situation in America is similar; Shen comments, "I still feel that I am in the same situation - far outside the mainstream: 'Yet because painting is a personal, as opposed to public, activity, Shen asserts that he is not isolated in any way: "In some cases I want to be alone and to work away from the 'big noise’." He recognizes that his art is not for everyone; rather it exists only for those who can understand and appreciate it. His paintings, which are minimal and abstract in equal measure, look at the American tradition of abstraction, which has been ascendant for over fifty years now. At the same time, twenty years ago, when Shen was living in China, abstraction had not been accepted by most people. Part of the reason he, and more than a few members of his generation, moved to New York was to find a situation in which he could freely work. When Shen left China, criticism of contemporary art was not only formal, it had a moral overtone.

Aware of being pigeonholed by critics and viewers, Shen believes that his art cannot be described as originating from a specific ethnic or national base: "If my art is considered international, it could also be understood as belonging to the individual-to myself. When I paint, I never think what category the work fits into. I don't care what people say; my painting is my own: 'Interpretation may shoehorn Shen's art into a space where the critic categorizes it in one way or the other, but this does not do justice to the particular attributes of his painting. Indeed, terms such as "international" and even "contemporary" may in fact hide an agenda that is commercial in nature. To see his art operating under the influence of painters like Mark Rothko or Ad Reinhardt misses the point. The art writer must come up with a reading that does justice to the specific aspects of Shen's work, rather than simplistically comparing them to artists whose style superficially resembles his own.

It is clear Shen wishes to avoid categorizations in general. Labels get in the way of experiencing his paintings. His work yields simple as well as complex pleasures; it tends to give forth a quiet glow, a result of the many layers he applies to the canvas. Always working with acrylic paint, Shen creates paintings that consist of infinitesimal gradations of tone, which appear to his audience as transcendent applications of color. In Untitled No. 30191-09 (2009), a large dark-grey painting, the feeling of dark, atmospheric misting is created. The bottom of the painting is darker than the middle and top, but this is hard to see: the work's method of preparation-its subtle changes-demands an ongoing involvement in viewing, often requiring us to be very close to the canvas. The painting suggests the great emptiness that space surrounds us with, enabling the viewer to contemplate the mythic power of art that is philosophically conceived. As we have noted, the New York critic, trained to see similarities in modern and contemporary Western abstraction, might easily affiliate Shen's work with the New York School; however, the real challenge lies in perceiving the painting as occurring outside boundaries that take the form of cultural allegiances. Shen is right to establish his position as an individualist who leaves the definitions of his art alone. Too much explanation can result in an unnecessarily limited perception.

The painting Untitled No.20119-09 (2009) asserts principles similar to those informing the work just mentioned. But here the bottom of the canvas is lighter, and it seems that the top of the painting is very dark. Moving from light to dark, the piece suggests fog, mist, or a deep sea. Like many of Shen’s works, it proposes a primal, inchoate self originating out of absence and unknowing. The painting feels calm, but it is not without a hint of menace; if it is nature he is appropriating, we remember that the ocean, like the self, is not always controllable. The notion of a visionary, ethereal atmosphere, central to Shen’s practice, is also seen in the painting Untitled No.30100-09 (2009). Here the color spectrum is wider:  Shen begins at the bottom with a grey or slate blue, slowly moving upward to an orange that grows deeper as it nears the top of the work. This is expansive art that demands close scrutiny, in large part because the color shifts are so very muted. Untitled No.20214-09 (2009) offers a slowly deepening pinkish red that, like the other canvases, grows darker toward the top of the painting.

Shen states, "A simple artwork sometimes contains multiple cultural elements, formed with several different techniques. My painting combines several kinds of influences: minimalism, abstraction, performance art, conceptual art". At the same time, his art refers to contemplation, calligraphy, woodcuts, watercolors. He is involved with a philosophical idealism that he has worked out for himself and, again, with Zen notions of enlightenment found in humble, reiterated activities. Ironically, Shen's Chinese audience sees his work as Western painting while Westerners see it as contemporary Chinese art. But the different views are not a matter of misreading; instead, they show how Shen is his own person, an independent in thrall to no one but himself. This dose not mean that he is without influence: he cites the work of sixteenth-century painter Ba Da Shan Ren, whom first encountered at the age of twenty, as inspirational: ”I was absolutely speechless - with his marvelous brushstrokes, fish and birds come alive. I first learned about feeling for abstraction from his painting.”

Shen's excitement on seeing Ba Da Shan Ren’s work was a result of the abstraction he found in it. Describing Ba Da Shan Ren’s work, Shen say, ”In some of his works, open space is composed with very few brushstrokes, a practice characterizing the essential sensibility of abstraction,” But historical figures are not Shen’s sole interest; his style also reflects the influence of styles  that have persisted into the twenty - first century from the century before. And among the Western artists who especially move him is Agnes Martin, whose repetitive lines establish an idealized philosophy that is close to Zen in their subtlety and restraint. Shen also cites the experience of seeing a work, long before he began abstraction, by Jackson Pollock at the Shanghai History Museum:

Pollock had an Oriental style, with his freely spreading lines and drips. Like Chinese paintings, his work consisted of layer upon layer of paint on top of a flat canvas. The tangled skeins worked out a space comparable to inner workings of the mind.

It is fitting to end this discussion of Shen’s art with an appraisal of his most recent painting, a gray-black triptych identified as Untitled No. 11119-09 (2009). The work consists of three panels, each of which is 162.5 by 111.7 centimetres in dimension. The colour again moves upward toward a dark grey from a near white. Looking closely at the triptych, the viewer sees horizontal lines created by the edge of the brush. There are vertical lines as well, made by the gaps between two brushstrokes. The atmosphere of the painting relates generally to nature, specifically to a cloudy sky. Still, at the very top of each panel there is a thin band of white canvas, as if Shen were showing us that this is a painted reality, not the cloud itself. Monumental in scope and ambition, Untitled No.11119-09 feels like a vast expanse of space that fully comes into being only after the viewer spends time studying the work. Shen has found in this and other recent paintings the grace of incalculable space, which resonates with us without turning into a metaphor for something else. One feels as though it is possible to walk right into the triptych - largely because the mist and its effects are so skilfully handled.

Asked to comment on his future, Shen says: "I will continue to work on my own direction, however it may be read by my critics and audience. Looking at the big picture of contemporary art, I am sure I will make significant work that differs from that of other artists." But Shen also admits that he doesn’t have a particular plan for the next few years, and that he can't predict how different his future work will be in comparison with past or current efforts. Even so, however, he believes his direction is clear: "I won't stop at any one point in my artistic life. I will move on without question." As Shen sees it, he wants to breathe outward, "get the qi [spirit] out." He believes that a large painting gives his viewers the chance also to breathe outward. Yet he also feels that he is absorbed by a painting; it is as if one were being sucked inward. It is not unusual that Shen describes his struggle and accomplishment in terms of breathing, for shaping the breath is central to meditation. This brings us full circle; just as the breath moves from emptiness to plenitude, so does our mind appreciate the void out of which all things originate. Shen's work makes this cycle remarkably clear.

Jonathan Goodman

poet and art critic, writes regularly for several magazines, including Art in America, Yi Shu and Sculpture. He is a senior editor for the quarterly magazine Art Asia Pacific, which is devoted to contemporary Asian art.

Notes：

1, All quotes are from a written interview conducted by the author through email in October 2009.

2, This article was first published on March/April issue of <YI SHU> magazine in 2010.