Based in Beijing, Chen Ke is one of China’s most influential young contemporary artists. Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh to become an artist, she gained recognition for her luminous and tender portraits of pink-cheeked childlike subjects.
In Breaker Chen Ke constructs layered and textured surfaces that meditate on the nature of childhood. With its contradictory ideas of utopia and lost paradise, Breaker alludes to a mythical space somewhere between fiction and reality. The emotional, dream-like mood is intensified by the subtle layering of thin, semi-translucent paint layers on top of a dark, pumice-like ground.
Chen Ke is represented by Perrotin, and her works can be found in the Sigg Collection, Switzerland and Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, amongst others. In 2012 her solo exhibition ‘With You, I Will Never Feel Lonely’ was held at the avant-garde Today Art Museum, Beijing.
Exhibition view of “With You, I Will Never Feel Lonely” at Today Art Museum, Beijing in 2012
Provenance
Michael Ku Gallery, Taipei Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Taipei, Michael Ku Gallery, The Mirror of Time, August 2010
2010 signed and dated ‘Ke [in Chinese] 2010’ lower right; further signed and titled ‘"Breaker" [in Chinese] Chen Ke [in Pinyin and Chinese] 2010’ on the reverse oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm. (19 5/8 x 19 5/8 in.) Painted in 2010.