Chen Yong 陈勇

Reflection and Intervention is not merely the title of this exhibition – it is a framework, a method, and an evolving state of practice for artist Chen Yong. Spanning lenticular painting, sculptural installation, and reflective object compositions, the exhibition situates Chen’s work at the intersection of personal affect and socio-cultural perception. These works invite viewers not only to reflect – on memory, space and emotion – but also to confront and momentarily intervene in their own habits of seeing and sensing.

At the core of Reflection and Intervention lies Chen’s insistence on artistic expression as a mode of critical consciousness. His works do not seek to represent the world in literal terms, but rather to reveal emotional intensities, perceptual ambiguities, and psychological disruptions that resist containment. By refusing the constraints of a fixed medium or stylistic category, each work articulates a singular, felt encounter with the world.

The Parallel Worlds Series – including Parallel Worlds #1 and The Place – epitomizes this practice. These immersive spatial interventions, composed of industrial and synthetic materials, unsettle the viewer’s orientation and perceptual anchoring. These are not environments that offer resolution or clarity, but instead act as thresholds – spaces that reflect the unspoken forces shaping both the individual psyche and the collective imaginary.

Dream (Roses in the Dark) extends Chen’s inquiry into lenticular surfaces that shift with the viewer’s movement, blurring the boundary between abstraction and recollection. These works, deeply tied to emotional perception, operate not as images to be interpreted, but as temporal experiences to be absorbed – inviting a kind of suspended cognition.

The exhibition also gathers a series of works developed during the COVID-19 pandemic – including No Light and Burns and Glows Blue. These pieces, never originally intended for public presentation, emerged as immediate responses to fear, uncertainty, and emotional fatigue. In Burns and Glows Blue, the bat functions as both cultural sign and spectral metaphor – a dual symbol of blessing and contamination. This gesture of reflective critique – positioned between private affect and global anxiety – is a central ethos of Reflection and Intervention.

The mirror-based installation series Memorial and A Moment of Joy furthers this duality. Reflective yet unstable, these works refract the viewer’s image into fragmented, shifting compositions. The material’s fragility is a metaphor for the instability of perception and identity, offering both a space of mourning and an aperture of self-recognition.

Additional works such as Fly, Bon Voyage, Nirvana, Dreamy Season, Red, and Venus function as poetic articulations of transformation, grief, hybridity, and ecological imagination. Portrait-based pieces like Give a Warm Name and The Mist explore psychological resilience and fragmentation in a time of prolonged social isolation.

The exhibition concludes with 2022, a work composed through improvisation and emotional flow. Like the title Reflection and Intervention itself, the painting offers no resolution – only space. It suspends meaning in favor of experience, inviting viewers to dwell in ambiguity, openness, and emotional resonance.

《反思与介入》不仅是展览的标题，更是艺术家陈勇持续实践中的一种方法论与精神状态。通过透镜光栅、空间装置与镜面物件等多重形式，陈勇的作品构建出一种介于个体情绪与文化感知之间的临界结构。这些作品不仅邀请观众进入一种“反思”的状态，也促使他们在观看的过程中完成对现实感知的一次次微妙“介入”。

《反思与介入》的核心，是艺术家对于“表达”作为一种批判意识形态的坚定立场。他的作品并不旨在具象化再现现实，而是试图呈现那些无法被概念或形式轻易捕捉的情绪强度、知觉模糊性与心灵震荡。艺术家拒绝关于媒介与风格的既定分类，相反，他让每件作品从自身情绪出发，以各自独立的逻辑与语法构建特定的观看经验。

在《平行世界》系列（包括《平行世界 #1》与《那里》）中，这种方法论得以具体体现。艺术家利用工业化的合成材料构建沉浸式空间装置，破坏观者对空间与感知的原有依赖。这些非叙事性的结构并不提供明确意义的导向，而是成为通向内在意识与集体想象之间的感知“临界带”。

《梦（黑暗中的玫瑰）》系列则将这种探索进一步推向二维空间，运用透镜光栅材料随着观者移动而呈现错视变化， 在抽象与记忆之间建立流动性。这些作品并非旨在被解读的图像，而是呼唤感知的时态经验，使观看者进入一种被延迟的认知状态。

展览还包含艺术家在新冠疫情期间创作的一系列作品，如《无光》《燃烧发出蓝色的光》。这些作品最初并非为了展出， 而是艺术家在面对焦虑、孤立与情绪倦怠时的直接反应。在《燃烧发出蓝色的光》中，蝙蝠成为一种幽灵般的象征物— 在文化与病毒之间游移，寓意福祉与恐惧的双重属性。这种“反思—介入”的行动既是艺术家的个人情绪实践，也是 他对全球危机语境的回应。

镜面装置系列《纪念碑》与《人们的欢愉》则深化了这种二元结构。作品利用可反射但易变形的塑料材料，将观者的影像不断裂变，形成游移而破碎的自我图像。这种视觉与材料的不稳定性，成为一种关于感知、身份与记忆脆弱性的有力隐喻，同时开启了悼念与自我凝视之间的情绪通道。

其他作品如《FLY》《一帆风顺》《涅槃》《多梦时节》《红》《维纳斯》在象征层面展开对情绪转变、悲伤、杂合生长与生态想象的诗性表达；而肖像作品《取一个温暖的名字》《云雾》则聚焦社会隔离中的心理韧性与精神裂解。

展览最终以即兴创作的《2022》收尾，作品未设草图，以情绪流动建构画面。正如展览标题“反思与介入”所揭示的，艺术家并不寻求答案，而是创造空间—一个让观者驻足、沉浸、并在不确定与开放中重新建构自身经验的场域。

What shape does your memory of those three years take? While these three years marked a turning point in human history, our artists fell silent one after another: too close and too immense, the past defies all telling. Yet rather than calling it silence, the loss of voice would be the more accurate term. Between legitimacy and creativity, which word could be used? Which scene could be described? Which moment needed to be inscribed in memory? When figurative representation ceases to serve its function, artists resort to abstraction. When books lose their memory, artists describe an alternative history.

What is presented in Reflection and Intervention, artist Chen Yong’s solo exhibition, can be seen as a reflection of the loss of the voice and a silent intervention. Situated at the center of the venue was a hanging image of a head wearing a facemask (No Light, 2020), which dominated the discursive production of the whole space. It invites us to recall those three years, perhaps ones already forgotten. The obscured face of this head is an allusion to an experience shared by everyone yet no longer spoken of. On the ground directly opposite it lies an iron chain, a chain set free, no longer bound to the use of binding. But the presentation itself is already a declaration: once the chain becomes legitimized, its reappearance will no longer be scrutinized; the shape of freedom has already been framed. 

A red skull, Red (2020), faces directly toward the gallery entrance. Its vivid blood-color, steeped in death and eternal authority, unwaveringly overwhelms anyone who stands before it and looks up. It is also facing the Parallel Worlds #1, Monument (2020-22), which stands at the entrance of the gallery. The monument itself is a weighty concept, carrying both physical weight and historical and social significance. The work, Parallel Worlds #1, Monument, seen from the front, resembles a crystal monument in radiant, vibrant color; yet from the side, its material turns out to be something so light, even “cheap”, white plastic “trash” – with “lightness,” Chen Yong dissolves the unbearable weight of history, time, and life.

The erection of a monument often signifies the “conclusion” of a significant socio-historical event; for an ordinary person to receive an official monument in their honor, they generally must have participated in a collective event that has attained official legitimacy. The great events experienced by those nameless ordinary people—excluded from legitimate historical narratives—have no monuments, nor could monuments ever truly be erected for them. These lives are as seemingly “insignificant” as this thin sheet of plastic film and must remain “nameless.” Just as their brilliant surfaces, viewed from every direction and angle, appear seemingly identical yet different, allowing distinct individuals to manifest themselves. Yet it is this insignificance and namelessness that constitute a pain too great for grand historical narratives to bear or articulate; an existence deserving of gravity yet denied it. Names matter. But when people are forced into namelessness, the artist finds another way of giving the nameless a name.

These three works form the central axis of Chen Yong’s exhibition. The artist tells us that public memory is not an iron chain. It is a death that cannot be ignored. It is a thin sheet of plastic film. It is an inscriptionless monument built by countless nameless individuals. It is an irrepressible act of reflection and intervention.

你对那三年的记忆是什么形状？这是对整个人类历史都有转折意义的三年，而我们的艺术家们纷纷噤声——太近太巨大的过去让人无从述说。但若说是沉默，不如说是失语。在合法性与创造性之间，哪一个词语可以被使用？哪一个画面可以被描绘？哪一个时刻需要被铭记？当具象失去效用的时候，艺术家诉诸于抽象，当书本失去记忆的时候，艺术家描绘另类的历史。

艺术家陈勇的个展《反思与介入》呈现的便是基于一种失语的反思，一种沉默的介入。展览的正中央以戴口罩的人头悬挂，主宰了整个空间的话语生产，它邀请我们回忆那三年，或许已经被遗忘的三年，这颗头颅看不清的面庞影射的是每个人共享却不再谈论的经历。正对的地面上是一条铁链，这是一条自由的铁链，不作捆绑之用，但呈现本身已经是一种昭示：当铁链一度成为合法合理时，它的再度出现将不必再被检视，自由的形状已经被框定。

正对着画廊里面是一颗鲜红头颅《红》，靓丽的血色浸染死亡与永恒权威，不可撼动震慑着任何到前仰望之人。它也正对着伫立在画廊进门处的《平行世界#1 碑》(2020-22)。“碑”本身是很沉重的概念，具有力学意义和历史社会意义。《平行世界#1》这个作品，从正面看如同一座色彩斑澜水晶碑，而从侧面看，它的材料竟然是如此轻盈甚至“便宜”的白色“垃圾”塑料——陈勇以“轻”消解历史、时间与生命之不可承受之重。

立碑往往是重大的社会历史事件的“终结”，普通人能被官方立碑的情况大体须是因加入了群体性的合法性事件。而那些无名的、合法历史叙事所未容纳的普通人所经历的巨大事件无人立碑也无从立碑。这些生命“轻贱”正如这薄塑料膜，这些生命又必须“无名”。正如这些四面八方各个角度呈现出似乎相同又不同的灿烂来让不同的个体“显形”，而这些轻贱与无名实际上却构成了大历史所不能承载与诉说之痛，是值得沉重却无法沉重的存在。名字是重要的，但是被迫无名时，艺术家用其他方式去让无名者有名。

这三个作品形成此次陈勇展览的中轴线，他告诉我们，大众记忆不是铁链，是不可忽视的死亡，是轻薄塑料，是一座由无数无名者构筑的无字碑，是不可遏制的反思与介入。