清影

On September 21, 2024, artist Chen Dongfan’s latest public artwork, Rainbow Tunnel, debuted at Qiandao Lake. Invited by the “Qiandao Lake Tunnel Art Museum NO.001 Artist Residency Program,” Chen transformed a 30-meter stretch of tunnel into an expansive art installation, attracting a large audience of locals and tourists. This project marks Chen’s first large-scale, site-specific painting in Hangzhou in 13 years, following his 2010 work Uncertain and 2011’s Where  is Happiness.

Rainbow Tunnel sweeps across the vast, arched ceiling of the tunnel, transforming the space into an immersive, unified painting installation. Through vibrant colors and symbolic imagery, Chen builds a rich visual narrative inside the tunnel. The work draws on ancient mythology, natural phenomena, and emotional perceptions: Nuwa’s five-colored stones, the Rainbow Dragon, lightning, rain, mountains, and lakes are interwoven with scenes of contemporary urban life, blending nature and human experience in a single, dreamlike landscape. While tunnels are typically seen as spaces for transit, Rainbow Tunnel harmonizes the natural beauty of Qiandao Lake with the artwork’s themes, transforming the journey into a sensory and emotional experience. Chen aims for each visitor, as they walk through the tunnel, to feel the awe and hope inspired by the interplay of color and myth. In creating Rainbow Tunnel, Chen focused on a dialogue between the artwork and the space, resonating with history, nature, and humanity. The appeal of public art lies in its openness and its connection with the audience. In Rainbow Tunnel, the vibrant colors that shift along the passageway evoke a journey through the belly of a rainbow dragon, sparking reflections on urban life and nature’s power.

On September 21, 2024, artist Chen Dongfan’s latest public artwork, Rainbow Tunnel, debuted at Qiandao Lake. Invited by the “Qiandao Lake Tunnel Art Museum NO.001 Artist Residency Program,” Chen transformed a 30-meter stretch of tunnel into an expansive art installation, attracting a large audience of locals and tourists. This project marks Chen’s first large-scale, site-specific painting in Hangzhou in 13 years, following his 2010 work Uncertain and 2011’s Where  is Happiness.

Rainbow Tunnel sweeps across the vast, arched ceiling of the tunnel, transforming the space into an immersive, unified painting installation. Through vibrant colors and symbolic imagery, Chen builds a rich visual narrative inside the tunnel. The work draws on ancient mythology, natural phenomena, and emotional perceptions: Nuwa’s five-colored stones, the Rainbow Dragon, lightning, rain, mountains, and lakes are interwoven with scenes of contemporary urban life, blending nature and human experience in a single, dreamlike landscape. While tunnels are typically seen as spaces for transit, Rainbow Tunnel harmonizes the natural beauty of Qiandao Lake with the artwork’s themes, transforming the journey into a sensory and emotional experience. Chen aims for each visitor, as they walk through the tunnel, to feel the awe and hope inspired by the interplay of color and myth. In creating Rainbow Tunnel, Chen focused on a dialogue between the artwork and the space, resonating with history, nature, and humanity. The appeal of public art lies in its openness and its connection with the audience. In Rainbow Tunnel, the vibrant colors that shift along the passageway evoke a journey through the belly of a rainbow dragon, sparking reflections on urban life and nature’s power.

Chen Dongfan’s large-scale, site-specific works are deeply rooted in a concern for public space and collective memory. In 2021, he created Long Time No See  in Chengdu at the residence of A4 Art Museum. In 2020, St. John’s University in New York invited him to create Sun Yat-sen Road in Color in front of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. In 2018, the NYC Department of Transportation and Chinatown Partnership invited him to produce The Song of Dragon and Flowers on Doyers Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown. At the same year, he completed Garden, a large spatial painting at his Long Island City studio. Other notable works include Heated Bloom, on the exterior of Inna Art Space in Hangzhou in 2017; Live Before You Die on the facade of a COCO-MAT building in Athens, Greece, in 2016; and his Hangzhou-based works Fairytale, Uncertain and Where  is Happiness created between 2011 and 2019.

Free to the public, Rainbow Tunnel is now on long-term display.