Chen Xiaoyun

A Little Bit More Virtual than Reality, A Little Bit Warmer than Craziness, A Little Bit Whiter than Darkness, A Little Bit Longer than a Heaving a Sigh

The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image. Near his studio, Chen often walks over fallen branches in late autumn and senses their existence. Thus, his placing them in diverse contexts builds a “narrative Ariadne’s thread” where the branches become “the language of things” intertextually cohering his oeuvre. Each branch provokes a new instinctual art making process without assigning too much meaning. In this particular work, tree branches are covered in black paint that resembles petroleum in thick calligraphic splatters. Here, metaphors of artifice and reality, as well as wistful emotions of transient existence, are loosely gestured through the paint over tree branches, forming a poetics of nature akin to the airs of ancient Chinese poetic anthologies that Hangzhou artists often reference.