Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present Shen Chen’s (b.1955, Shanghai) inaugural exhibition with the gallery at the Hong Kong space, featuring twelve paintings created between 2009 and 2021. Shen will be the first Chinese artist in the gallery’s roster and his first European solo exhibition with the gallery is planned for 2022 at Kanaal, Antwerp.

Throughout his career, Shen emphasises the artistic process and materials in his practice. In recent years, he mainly applies the Western medium of acrylic paint in a way that is reabsorbed through his training and knowledge of the qualities of ink. Painting with the canvas on the floor, he adopts a physical and introspective gesture of layering brushstrokes onto the canvas. Incorporating the flow of his qi (breath movement and energy), Shen paints each brushstroke vertically and by doing so, forms a horizontal marking of where the brushes end and begin again. What emerges from the canvas is a transformative, ever-changing, and endless space. With subtle tonal gradation and nuances, Shen’s works bear stylistic influences of paintings from the Colour Field movement of the 1940s and 50s in New York. Yet, his practice is rooted in an innate philosophical mode of thought from his training in traditional Chinese ink painting.

Gallery address: 21&22/F Coda Designer Centre, 62 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang