Chen Zhen｜Perseverance of Regeneration

Chen Zhen (1955, Shanghai - 2000, Paris) was a visual artist. Zhen grew up in a French-speaking medical family in the former French Concession area during the Cultural Revolution. At a very young age he became interested in the links between traditional Chinese philosophy and Western culture. Later, at the age of twenty-five, Chen Zhen was struck by an incurable illness, hemolytic anemia, an experience which gave him vast insight into the value of time and space at a strong analytical level.

About two years before his death, the artist decided to study traditional Chinese medicine, considering it to involve a way of thinking and behaving very close to his own vision of art. He transformed and distilled this knowledge in his final works dealing with the dialogue between body and spirit, Man and the Universe.

Perseverance of Regeneration

In his work, Perseverance of Regeneration, Chen Zhen explores the explosive expansion of cities in the Asian-Pacific and the re-negotiation between development and human destiny. The artist compares the city to the body, which are both represented in the form of a big, smashed black car. The car seems here to be the source and the site where life takes place. This harbors from its innards, a countless number of toy cars, which burst out from every crack and hole. Crawling restlessly around the body, the car toys look like ants that continue to engender from themselves, in this “Perseverance of Regeneration”. This spasm of birth gives us an impression of invasion and catastrophe in and around space and shows at the same time a power of multiplication.

*The artist is presented by Galleria Continua