Inna Art Space is delighted to present Portrait: Chen Dongfan × Walter Robinson, a joint exhibition of paintings by both artists. On view at the gallery’s Hangzhou location from May 25 to July 25, 2019, the exhibition is also accompanied by a brochure and a preview of selected works highlighting two artists' practice at the gallery’s New York location from May 3 to May 7, 2019.
After last summer’s “The Song of Dragon and Flowers,” a public art project on Doyers Street in New York’s Chinatown, Dongfan returned to his studio to work on several ongoing projects of portrait painting, notably one series on view here: “Portrait for No One (无主之作).” Compared with the artist’s previous mural artworks (some of which are permanently on-view in cities including Hangzhou, Athens, and Turin), these easel paintings remain his habitual use of rich colors and gestural abstraction, and are added on with more recognizable references to modern art masters’ iconic styles, for instance, Picasso’s cubism characters and Bacon’s robust brushstrokes. As the title suggests, the series involves no sitters. The lack of specific subjects enables Dongfan to investigate painterly expression through imaginary characters and to approach his construct of an ideal portrait. It also makes Dongfan the model and the author at the same time; and the resulting portraits are a certain spiritual reflection, rather than figures for gaze in a traditional sense.
A painter and an art critic, Robinson applies insightful observations of consumerism and pop culture to form a unique visual language. His subject matter engages many mundane yet meaningful signifiers, ranging from pulp-fiction covers, branding advertisements, to daily consumptions like fast food, liquor, and cigarette packs. For the artist, using the transitory and lowbrow commercial imagery in fine art is “a kind of consumer revenge.” Additionally, while characters which have appeared in magazines and ads are instrumentalized objects, still-life depictions of daily objects possess a strong sense of anthropopathy. Therefore, the notion of "portrait" becomes a dual conception and a genre full of possibilities for Robinson to extend his exploration of painting. Portrait introduces works of various scales and media by the artist. The juxtaposition of Robinson’s signature large-format acrylic on bedsheet and smaller drawings on paper intensifies the impact that is at once fresh and vintage, familiar and distant, appealing and ironic.
Dongfan and Robinson, with their studios sitting next door to each other, are “brush-pals.” The two artists produce independent works while also enjoy and profit from both the differences and similarities between them.
Chen Dongfan, born in Shandong province, China, in 1982, earned his B.F.A. in 2008 from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Dongfan was one of the first artists to be represented by Inna Art Space, where he previously had four solo exhibitions. His works have been widely exhibited in New York, China, and Europe. The artist is known for his large-scale public art projects including Uncertain (Hangzhou, 2010); Where Is The Happiness? (Hangzhou, 2011); Dream (Turin, 2011); and Live Before You Die (Athens, 2016); all of which are permanent installations. In Summer 2018, Dongfan was selected to realize a site-specific public art project, co-presented by NYCDOT and Chinatown Partnership, on Doyers Street in New York. The artist created a mural covering the asphalt pavement of the entire 200-foot-long street, entitled The Song of Dragon and Flowers. It is “the portrait of the past and present of Doyers Street,” as noted by The New York Times. Dongfan moved to New York in 2014, where he continues to live and work.
Walter Robinson, born in 1950 in Willington, DE, moved to New York for studies in psychology and art history at Columbia University. He practiced art writing and criticism in early years serving as a founding editor for Art-Rite, the News Editor for Art in America, the Art Editor for East Village Eye, a correspondent for the weekly television show Art TV Gallery Beat. He was the founding editor-in-chief for artnet magazine from 1996 to 2012. He is also an influential columnist for Artspace, where his introduction of the notion of “Zombie Formalism” in 2014 becomes significantly phenomenal. Robinson started painting in the late 1970s. He had his first solo show at Metro Pictures in 1982. The artist's pulp romance imageries, depiction of consumerism symbols, and adaption of fashion-branding visuals gain him acclaims as “a crucial figure among the image appropriators of the Pictures Generation,” described by The New York Times. In 2016, the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery reopened with the inaugural exhibition of a survey featuring Robinson’s works. In 2017, Walter Robinson, presented at Inna Art Space’s Hangzhou gallery, marked the artist's China debut. Robinson currently lives and works in New York.
fold
