A conversation
Q
A
Liu Tian: How about we start with colour? Colour has to be pretty important to you?
Chen Dongfan: Yes. You could say it\'s my weapon.
Liu Tian: You just mentioned that you don’t generate forms from sketches or blueprints, and that this “emerges” rather from your work with colour.
Chen Dongfan: Yes. If you look at a painting, you see what a certain patch of colour actually is, this swatch of yellow for instance. This isn’t something one can arrange by design, but exists rather for itself. First I apply the yellow and at first it’s relatively for
Liu Tian: Nonetheless, between all these different colours there’s an interaction occurs.
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. That’s where most of the work is. It’s also what’s most difficult to regulate. How can so many colours exist alongside one another without “fighting”? As it is, sometimes one just has to let them “fight” - so to speak. If we talk about compo
Liu Tian: I think that’s really interesting: You’re most fond of black and white, and yet your paintings consist of so many different hues. At the same time you say however that when you paint you’re searching for the serenity of black and white. In fact, if you we
Chen Dongfan: Yes, it’s extremely difficult. As it happens, I have more than ten paintings here that I’ve always just wanted to paint over in black and white. It’s just difficult to bring myself to do it. Because what’s there isn’t something you can necessarily see, ma
Liu Tian: Is what you’re creating in your work a sort of “equilibrium” then?
Chen Dongfan: Before I would have said it was about looking for order in disorder, but more recently I discover that yes, really what I’ve been looking for is a sort of “equilibrium” and not just the sort we talked about before, the tranquil, serene harmonies of black
Liu Tian: Do you think of your work as expressionistic? Or otherwise anti-expressionistic?
Chen Dongfan: Early on I really thought my works were expressionistic, only later did I realise they were in fact rather more lyrical. It was for this reason I put images to one side and chose to work by abstract means. What people encountered and were moved by had its
Liu Tian: You said there was once a child helped you to distinguish the library painting as being a ruin strewn with the battered shells of toys… Nonetheless, the state of mind you’re describing now doesn’t seem to be to do with making distinctions?
Chen Dongfan: Exactly. People often ask me what I think when I work. What do I paint? I say I don’t know. So you don’t know how you’re going to paint it all then? They say. So I say it’s exactly because I don’t know that I start to paint in the first place. Of course t
Liu Tian: I realise it’s an exaggeration, but there are some artists, people like Guo Feng-yi and the Taiwanese artist Hong Tong, who’s standpoint is analogous in a way to that of the “medium”, painting as a way to commune with other worlds, something quite distinc
Chen Dongfan: I believe in this kind of thing — mystic entities that take up your hand to paint. This state is very difficult to arrive at however and perhaps only manifests in a couple of works now and then. But painting isn’t a kind of improv- performance, (so often)
Liu Tian: So where do you think there’s an excess?
Chen Dongfan: It’s probably that I don’t want to understand too much, that I’m too shy or that I don’t want people to see things too clearly.
Liu Tian: You don’t want to let others understand too much or you yourself don’t want to?
Chen Dongfan: I guess it’s that I want there to be a little something left over, to see whether or not there are other possibilities. Honestly, having said all this, already I start to doubt it. I’d say “it’s probably this” or “it’s probably not this”, something like t
Liu Tian: So you don’t want things to be too clear-cut.
Chen Dongfan: Exactly. So there’ll be other possibilities left over. I don’t like things to be too precise, my work included. But I’m just not sharp enough. If you attend one of my exhibitions, I’ll chat with you, tell you how I work and why … If I was more confident I
Liu Tian: Do you think the explanations you provide really hold any baring on the works themselves?
Chen Dongfan: No. But they might help you to get interested, or feel something towards a work, like a sort of inroad. Later what you see certainly won’t be any of the things I said and its the vista of all that that’s really most important. Earlier on painting for me w
Liu Tian: You said just now about finding order in disorder. What about here? What is it constitutes those two things?
Chen Dongfan: This is really rather less about painting as such and more about my public engagements. These projects are far broader in terms of their potential implications. There will be lots of people collaborating with you, all of whom will ask: What do you want to
Liu Tian: A few questions now that I’ll ask in series. Firstly, I feel we’re inhabiting a very tragic moment in history, an age of the schema or schematism, so to speak.
Chen Dongfan: What does that mean?
Liu Tian: It refers to what you talked about when you make a project, about what you want to do. Really that’s something you don’t know. As it is, what’s really important in anything is usually something that can’t be accounted for in advance. But today you’re alwa
Chen Dongfan: I agree. It’s just like the idea of (a place) “North by North”. North is a pole, a direction, so what’s north of there is unclear. You know where it is you need to go but at the same time aren’t quite certain where exactly this is. This is really very lo
Liu Tian: In my opinion Cai Guo-qiang is the very epitome of what in medieval China was referred to as a “Political Strategist” (Chinese, Zong-heng Jia).
Chen Dongfan: Exactly. That sort of things needs a certain sort of energy. Not only does one have to be an artist, one also needs to be good at PR, to be good at making presentations. If you’re engaged in making public projects and you lack this kind of energy you won’
Liu Tian: The second question now. We just touched on the subject of the reader or spectator’s accessing work. In my opinion works need to have a certain “resistance”. Still, there are people who would rather things lacked this — who just want to understand and so
Chen Dongfan: This matter of “not understanding” makes me think of some musician friends of mine a few years ago who had a saying that there’s no such thing as “not understanding”: if a breeze passes, you look at the landscape or eat a meal, you wouldn’t say you couldn
Liu Tian: I once saw a piece of verse in which the poet describes being on a train reading poetry while the friend who’s with him eats an orange. As she’s peeling her orange she asks him what he’s reading, saying no one understands poetry. The poet thinks, then say
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. It’s exactly that kind of logic.
Liu Tian: There was something we touched on just now, your saying how you often quote, even translate passages from well-known paintings. How do you approach this sort of relationship? Or is it like you said, like “leaning on a master”?
Chen Dongfan: When I was very young I lived in a little town in the North of China. Even then I was very fond of painting and would often take a great heap of my creations to show to all the pot painters and street artists living nearby. At that time things were very l
Liu Tian: I’m going to ask another question in the same, boring format again: when you appropriate certain elements from masterpieces, what it is exactly that you’re quoting? Take the Manet you mentioned for instance, a work by Willem De Kooning or Francis Bacon. W
Chen Dongfan: Hmm, a reason. Haven’t I already mentioned, when I paint I need first to have a reason. That is to say an opportunity or chance juncture, when something you’ve been mulling over internally is discarded, thrown away, just at the moment you begin to work on
Liu Tian: So the things you prop yourself up with are really a sort of ladder? As soon as you’ve climbed up you really don’t need them any more.
Chen Dongfan: Haha, yes, you could say it’s that unscrupulous.
Liu Tian: To be honest, that’s the way it ought to be, if the relationship’s a healthy one that is. The painters of antiquity were always relying on their predecessors as a means of taking their own practices forward.
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. Once I’d more or less half finished with that piece, I started to wonder whether it was necessary to really probe, profoundly into that painting of Manet’s. I went to watch something by the BBC but by halfway was already asleep. Afterwards p
Liu Tian: But I still feel there could be some artists - figures you really admire or have been influenced by. Maybe just one, or perhaps there’s a whole list of names?
Chen Dongfan: There is, or rather there are. I’ll have to drag them out and sully their names I suppose. I have however been lucky enough to see a few retrospectives - Cindy Sherman for instance, Roy Lichtenstein — where it was possible to discern the changes evident i
Chen Dongfan: I feel like there might be a few people who could be of particular referential value for you - figures like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquait, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Is that so?
Chen Dongfan: These are all people who I feel it’s rather necessary to keep at arms’ length. The similarity is too great. I remember when I was making work for my graduation exhibition, my tutor at the time said my work resembled the Japanese Ukiyo-e, that and Keith Ha
Liu Tian: Because originally this was a broadcast image. With Warhol’s work especially. You know, he once said, “I wish I had invented bluejeans.”
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. Hence if a work is appropriated in some way this makes me very happy, I’d even encourage it. I am very interested in the ways in which artworks might be appropriated or broadcast. My work starts with urban geographies, not on the gallery wal
Liu Tian: I think what you just said is brilliant. That if one wishes to effect change in ones work, all that’s needed is to change the way one lives. This is really interesting. With concern to the spaces of daily life and the social, compared with many other arti
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. I believe that at the same time as one makes changes in ones way of living, equivalent change will manifest in the things one produces. The moment ones work starts to show signs of flagging, this is immediately not just a matter of appearanc
Liu Tian: Nonetheless, there are still people who feel the same as me, that when they see your work they think, oh, this looks like Keith Haring. But you weren’t really aware of Haring’s work to begin with. How would you explain this?
Chen Dongfan: It doesn’t really matter all that much. There will always be times when people say your work reminds them of someone else’s. This can also be interesting. Even after this, there’ll be a whole list of other names to correspond with, right up until the day
Liu Tian: So the goal, ultimately, still remains to maintain a certain distances from all these other people.
Chen Dongfan: When people compare you to others as a way of saying what you’re doing still isn’t quite good enough, all it means is you still need more time.
Liu Tian: With regard to (what you said in) your previous interview, when you said you were “a liar”. Federico Fellini also has a book whose title is “Je suis un grand menteur” (“I am a Born Liar”).
Chen Dongfan: Really? I never knew. It’s as if everything I only come to terms with the things I have reflectively. As it is, I rely a lot on what I perceive immediately when I’m actually doing things. Every one of us is locked in a process of slow maturation, where -
Liu Tian: There are even some people who might express displeasure, grimacing.
Chen Dongfan: Yes, that too. It’s really very interesting. One needs to be that little bit more precise in ones way of going about things. Like in this skull-portrait here. Looking, you discover the blush-effect is achieved by sticking paper to the painted surface. To
Liu Tian: So it’s really very different, working on different scales?
Chen Dongfan: Indeed, the difference is huge. Friends have said that I’m a pragmatic artist, that my need to express myself is very strong. When my work is put in public spaces, the stimuli and feedback it elicits are all very direct. But when one returns to the studio
Liu Tian: The bigger the canvas, the higher the “stakes” are for what you choose to place upon this - so to speak. It’s just like playing Poker. With a smaller work you keep the stakes low. The larger ones, well, it’s really “All in”. You throw down everything you’
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. If you look at the lower portions of this large canvas, layered up there there’s actually six or seven different paintings. Due to some mistake or other, or simply for feeling something’s wrong, I’ll often repaint an area several times. It t
Liu Tian: Having said this, what’s your stance on conventional, pop-culture?
Chen Dongfan: Issues that are discussed today, television serials, films, american imports, animation, et cetera, of course, I will always take a look. I feel there’s something important bound up in it all, that I’m young and so ought to have the pleasures and issues-c
Liu Tian: I recall that in certain interviews you’ve brought up matters that relate to vitality and a certain warmth or benevolence?
Chen Dongfan: Before there was no such concept as “positive action”. Even then I always said that when producing one has to stay true to ones initial sentiments in a way that’s positive. But even last year I was still ardently reinforcing the notion of (something’s bei
Liu Tian: Do you mean something “unfettered” - something free of worldly attachment?
Chen Dongfan: Probably (really it’s a matter of “emptiness”), but this also includes certain matters I’ve only learned to appreciate recently, some so-called “dark issues” I’d not previously paid much attention to. Death for instance, something none of us can run away
Liu Tian: Well-behaved and therefore strange?
Chen Dongfan: Exactly. Too meek, too proper and acquiescing and therefore lacking that little bit of something extra. The great masters’ things are always very proper in a way yes, but within this there’s still something there that grabs you, it isn’t just hollow in th
Liu Tian: This idea of proper-ness probably arises from conventions we’ve learned. One could also say it’s about a “frame”, and hence not something that necessarily applies to the picture itself.
Chen Dongfan: That’s right. It’s probably why I find it so difficult just to lock myself away at home or stay for long periods of time in a single place. Every year I take a certain amount of time to go out, see new things and absorb a variety of stimuli.
Liu Tian: It’s also a way of broadening your horizons in living.
Chen Dongfan: That’s right, a way of opening up. But making changes in ones life also needs a certain amount of daring.
Liu Tian: Including the trip to New York? Might this also be ascribed the same logic?
Chen Dongfan: When exactly was it that our lives stopped moving? When I was in my teens I left home to study art. I took my bags and travelled throughout China. I didn’t even know about art schools at that time, about the China Academy of Art, all I wanted was to becom
Liu Tian: There are some people who are fascinated not by process itself but by those things that radiate from off of this, the dazzling accessories that so often accompany art today.
Chen Dongfan: Don’t people say that it’s only by forty that we really get the hang of life? I think there’s still room for experiment then.
Liu Tian: What about Huang Bin-hong (C20th Chinese painter)? He was sixty by the time he started to do this.
Chen Dongfan: Haha, yep. Someone once said that if life ought to be an experience, one should pass this as is needed, regardless of whether this be thrilling or just dull. I think this hits the nail on the head. Nonetheless, there’ll still be certain ambitions, the des
Liu Tian: To get back to what you were saying about “being a liar”. Why would you say this?
Chen Dongfan: Originally what I said was “I’m a liar, bringing fantasy to reality”. This means taking one of life’s facets and shifting it around a bit. It’s still reality. Even things that don’t seem like they’re for real and even the surreal are all a part of this. T
Liu Tian: Pablo Picasso once said: “Art is a lie that tells the truth”.
Chen Dongfan: That’s a good way of putting it. He’s right! Lately my confidence has taken a huge blow, it’s crumbled. I can’t think of myself as anything, I feel completely incapable. More than anything I’ve come to think all artists are is tricksters, liars. Yep, Pica
Liu Tian: There are many implicit motifs that carry through the painting discourse of the twentieth century, abstraction, decoration and so on. What’s your stance with regard to this sort of issue?
Chen Dongfan: Everything is abstract really. Lately I’ve been looking at a lot of photography. There too I find elements of abstraction, even if what’s photographed is of course very figurative. Although film always has a specific plot or storyline, this too can be ver
Liu Tian: So what is the decorative? What manner of state or function is it this refers to?
Chen Dongfan: It’s a matter of placement. I don’t know if my understanding is an accurate one. Whilst at the art museum in Cologne, I saw a video work by Joseph Beuys of the artist arranging poles inside a room, frantically placing them horizontally, then vertically, m
Liu Tian: The key is the process’ being additive. Although you might say the final result and that of the initial arrangement are identical, what’s important is that - in between - there’s been a hundred different placements.
Chen Dongfan: Right. For me to really make a good piece of work takes years. The uppermost layer is one that perhaps I’ve only worked on for a few hours but what really matters is those layers underneath, the innumerable strata this in fact conceals. It’s very rare tha
Liu Tian: You should make an X-ray of it.
Chen Dongfan: There was one day someone else mentioned making X-rays of my works. The idea terrifies me. If one were to make an X-ray image of my works, underneath there’d be a great deal of rubbish, things too awful even to behold.
Liu Tian: There’s something archaeological in it, the feeling of reaching a base-level.
Chen Dongfan: Essentially what it is is a continual decision making process. There’s no saying whether or not your choices are necessarily the best possible, they’re certainly not always the most appropriate, what matters is the continuity of that decision making proce
Liu Tian: How do you judge when to stop?
Chen Dongfan: This is something I’ve never really understood. There are a lot of external factors. It’s something that’s always troubled me. Actually, I have great difficulty knowing when to stop.
Liu Tian: What kind of external factors are you referring to?
Chen Dongfan: There can be a stage or state where a painting isn’t finished. This doesn’t mean I necessarily will it into be that way, rather, as a result of certain factors, it just stops at that point. Later on when I look back at it I’ll think I don’t want to work a
Liu Tian: It’s probably that you will in fact never really have a way of finishing.
Chen Dongfan: Yes, it’s really very difficult. Nonetheless, I try to come up with ways of doing things precisely in order to overcome (this feeling). Only from last year did I feel I was finally able to really begin working. Having spent so many years, it’s as if it ha
Liu Tian: Why warmth?
Chen Dongfan: C: I don’t know. It’s difficult to say. When I started painting skulls for example, of course I didn’t want there to be anything sinister in there. Just like when I started to pay attention to things referring to sexuality, I also hope there would be some