Chen Zhen

Chen Zhen was born in Shanghai in 1955 and died in Paris in December 2000. Since his early passing, interest in his artistic production has anything but waned--he is increasingly visible as both an irreplaceable talent unto himself and a missing piece in the increasingly widely acclaimed Chinese avant-garde. His admirers have founded the Association of the Friends of Chen Zhen, whose roster now includes the late Harald Szeemann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, designer Agnès B. and many prominent artists from Asia, Europe and the United States. With the encouragement of the Association and other allies and fans, Chen Zhen's work has been featured in international exhibitions including U.S. solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and at P.S. 1, New York. This volume makes available for the first time the sketches and proposals for projects left unrealized at the time of his death, allowing viewers to trace the trajectory his work might have taken. These glimpses of his working process offer insight into the ideas that drove him, and "translate" the visual and physical strategies viewers have seen in finished work into his own French and English. A proposal for a labyrinth expresses the desire to reach the "sublime spontaneously, the nature and the human spirituality...to reorganize the way of looking at the surrounding[s]" and "to raise the dream of tomorrow." He succeeded without even leaving the drawing board.