Chen Wei: Fractured Chapters

In the organizer's words:

After six years, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Chinese photo artist Chen Wei. The exhibition title "Fractured Chapters" alludes to the fragmentary perception of people, which is often subjectively distorted. Chen Wei also plays with this ambiguity in his pictorial composition. "We all live in mutual misunderstandings and biases. Differences breed culture and propose coexistence. These give birth to unreachable goals, unspeakable subjects, and a New City that is always under construction."

Since 2013, Chen Wei has been working on the series "New City", which primarily reflects the effects of the rapid growth of Chinese megacities since the 1990s on Chinese society and its cityscape. It shows the simultaneity of modernity, innovation, decay and abandonment. The speed of progress creates a feeling in people that is characterized by a mixture of fascination and melancholy. Chen Wei always tried to express this mood in his iconic, mostly deserted and staged images. The urban scenes seem like frozen moments in a movie or memories of a dream, often leaving behind an intangible feeling. These fictitious, surreal pictorial creations are based on observations that Chen Wei takes from his everyday surroundings.

The artist had long been preoccupied with the question of how to complete the "New City" series of works. The stagnation of progress in urban development caused by the pandemic brought a natural end, so to speak, to the idea of the continuity of this "New City". The work "New Gate" marks a kind of transition between these two worlds. An idyllic street corner, illuminated in warm light, leads the viewer to a small staircase with a supposed entrance, but the wall remains closed, there is no door. Due to the rapid pace of construction in China, it has happened time and again that doors have been placed in the wrong places despite structural specifications and have therefore been removed again. The title of this work is also an allusion to the old Zen wisdom that the great path is without a door.

The stylistic orientation towards the old masters of painting and photographic artists such as Jeff Wall or representatives of the Düsseldorf School of Photography is also recognizable in Chen Wei's latest works. The poetic pictorial composition, in which color, materiality and light are perfectly coordinated, is always in the foreground and has an immediate effect on the viewer. The socio-political allusion to contemporary life in China only comes to light on closer inspection of his works. The presence of the human is reinforced by its absence.

Chen Wei (*1980 in Zhejiang Province) lives and works in Beijing. He is one of the most important Chinese photo artists of his generation. Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle has been working with Chen Wei since 2010 and is the only gallery in Europe to represent his work. In 2021, his works were last shown in solo exhibitions at the HOW Art Museum and the West Bund Art Museum in Shanghai. At the end of 2024, Chen Wei will have a solo presentation at Fotografiska in Shanghai.