Shen Chen: Two-Sided Story—Jonathan Goodman, July 2005

Shen Chen is a China born artist who lives and works in New York. Accordingly, his attitude as an artist combines aspects of Western and Chinese art in ways that do justice to both traditions, although his current series of acrylic abstractions enable him to connect with the headier moments of the New York School, which has provided him with an outlet that does justice to his extended period of time spent in America.

It is of course interesting to note that Shen's art also reflects the well-known abstract effects of Chinese art, but what Shen has done is to isolate certain kinds of gestures that connect him not only to the brilliant sublime of a painter like Agnes Martin, but also to those Chinese paintings in which the gesture reveals itself to be a prototype of abstract art, so extraordinary is Chinese art's mastery of all kinds of effects in its ink painting.

The question increasingly facing contemporary artists such as Shen is, Can styles be acknowledged in such a way that ways of painting build on each other, rather than become weakened by the contact of another culture making inroads into a visual language that is primarily historical instead of being utterly new? Shen's blurred, misty effects are deeply poetic in their intent; His brushwork, leaving traces of color on carefully prepared canvases, communicates a love of subtle reasoning that seduces his audience into a contemplative reverie, the abstractions serving as a kind of matrix enabling the extended study of the effect of Shen's hand on the surface of his paintings. The work may seem neat at first, but the artist endeavors to create an atmosphere that stands up to the recent history of painting and is seen as a way of communicating fundamental values about art. Shen is first and foremost a painter, someone intent of balancing color and form in a way that is thoroughly practiced but metaphorically new. We have, then, Shen to thank when we give ourselves over to his visionary, acutely elegant system.


—Jonathan Goodman, a poet and critic, writes regularly for several magazines, including Art in America and Sculpture. He is a senior editor for the quarterly Art Asia Pacific, which is devoted to contemporary Asian art.