Shen Chen Launches Fall Exhibition Program in Walpole

CYNTHIA-REEVES is pleased to launch our fall exhibition program at The Barn at 28 Main in Walpole, New Hampshire, with a solo show of new works by Chinese painter, Shen Chen, the gallery's fifth solo exhibition of this artist's work.

In this exhibition, Shen Chen debuts new work from his ongoing series of acrylic paintings on canvas, as well as a return to his meticulous ink painting on paper - a discipline that was the beginning of his artistic career. The ink drawings showcase his signature minimalist brushwork and line painting, while hewing back to the origins of his discipline in calligraphy and ink brush drawing.

In his paintings, the artist's methodical layering of color achieves resonant tonal hues, and manifests a rigorous grounding in a meditation on breath. To create his subtle ombré surfaces, Chen works with the canvas on the studio floor. He layers the paint in precisely calibrated vertical brushstrokes; the discrete horizontal lines visible on the surface are a record of where each brushstroke - and attendant breath - begins. Of this latest work -- and Chen's studio practice in general -- art critic Robert Morgan, who has studied Chen's work for a decade, writes in the artist's catalogue:

In contrast to other important Chinese artists living or who have lived in New York, Chen functions solely as a painter. He is very clear about his position. He is committed to painting as a form that gives him the space and time to do what he wants and to express what he needs (without necessarily being expressive). For Shen Chen, there is no reason to take photographs or to make installations. He has no incentive to perform or participate in media-driven spectacles that, in recent years, have seduced so many artists. He is a painter, specifically an abstract painter, intent on working with the surface, using acrylic paint the way he was trained to use ink. -- Robert Morgan, "Paintings in Memory of Time and Infinity", 2014.

SHEN CHEN at CYNTHIA-REEVES, 28 Main Street, Walpole, NH, September 3 - October 22