S: You majored in sculpture during your undergraduate studies. What was the opportunity that led you to choose painting as a medium?
C: When I was in school, a classmate used a printer to create, which inspired me to use some office supplies to draw. So I also bought a printe, printed repeatedly on the same paper, and then used a ballpoint pen and correction fluid to draw. Another time I went to the countryside and when my teacher was engrossed in looking at a tree root, I realized that I couldn't see anything, so I gave up sculpture.
S: I noticed that you had many works with a manga style in your early days. Do you have any particular favorite manga artists? What attracted you the most about them?
C: In the early days, I was quite fond of Palepoli from Guwutu Maru, and I felt that he had a lot of gameplay in black, white, and ink. Another thing is Quimby the mouse, which is a manga I bought before. It's the kind of manga serialized in newspapers, which is quite different from the manga in the form of books I read now. The size of newspapers is larger, and there is more content on one page. I also want this kind of full composition for my work this time.
Many times, what attracts me more are cartoonists and illustrators, because for me, there is more fun in their works. I feel that many of these painting styles are too young compared to the thousands of years of shelf painting. With the support of digital tools, the vitality in terms of visual aspects alone is incomparable to shelf painting. However, when I share them with some painter friends, I always hear threshold like comments like "this is too illustration." I always feel that some of my painter friends inadvertently maintain the status of shelf painting, but as far as I know, some illustrators also create their own works without commercial commissions, which is not much different from the creative state of painting.
Comic 28
2020
纸本水墨 / Ink on paper
21×30 cm
S: In the new works in the solo exhibition, including some of your previous works, you can actually see that your handling of specific images is not done through a painting technique to deal with the edges. (In my experience, many people with a background in painting tend to make the edges very blurred, thereby strengthening space and volume, which is also a technique that has always been used in academic painting.) Instead, you use a method similar to comic line drawing and coloring to strengthen the edges, making them sharper. Where do you think your way of handling images comes from?
C: Perhaps it's because I'm interested in comics, I think drawing lines is a more imaginative way. The technique of realistic academic painting focuses more on observing what you want to paint, and then doing your best to restore it. It often considers issues such as accuracy in form and color matching, which are more relevant to reality. But most of the things I want to draw are imagined, and using hook lines may also make it difficult for me to even imagine factors such as the virtual and real edges or diffuse reflection light.
I have also tried posing or using generated images as materials, but no matter how I do it, there are always some differences from my imagination. For example, when I search for character materials online, the posture is always a bit awkward. When I want to draw a car, I can't find the angle I want, so in fact, hooking it up is a more intuitive way. But in fact, the focus is not on it. I may find it interesting to draw a person standing there holding something in their hand, but as for whether the edge line of this person is virtual or not, it may not be that important. What interests me about the way of drawing lines like in comics is that there is actually a writing like pleasure in drawing lines, which coincides with the temperament of comics themselves.This feeling can be felt when reading or drawing comics, and it may also be one of my impulses to draw.
For example, in this' earliest painting ', even after a thousand years, one can still feel the exhilaration of drawing. So currently, I still think that drawing lines is more direct and closer to the most primitive way of drawing, even if the final picture is completed, I don't want the initial lines to lose their status.
魔鬼漫才 / Devilishi Manzai
2024
布面丙烯 / Acrylic on canvas
180 × 240 cm
S: I have another feeling about the new exhibition works, which is that compared to the large areas of solid colors in previous works, this batch of colors is mostly black, white, and gray blocks, with scattered solid color blocks. Have you planned this approach or transformation beforehand? Or perhaps what caused the change in your color selection?
C: Perhaps it's just a consideration of composition. At first, I thought it would be interesting to see both indoors and outdoors in one picture, but drawing a vertical screenshot of a house would turn it into an anatomical drawing of architecture, which would be boring. Later on, I realized that it would be more interesting to draw both indoor and outdoor events at the same time. This actually made the events more important, so the black house eventually became a symbol that reminded me of indoor and outdoor events.
我想要你的人生 / I Want Your Life
2024
布面丙烯 / Acrylic on canvas
140 × 180 cm
S: I can see some obvious narrative content in some scenes, as if integrating a story into one picture. Do you think stories or narratives are important in your visuals?
C: Is it important or not? I think the interesting story is just the starting point of this painting. In the end, it was the result of countless magic modifications. However, if you didn't hear this story at the beginning, you wouldn't have the impulse to draw. For example, the starting point of one of the paintings was when you heard a story about a person punching another person to death, and in the end, the killer's hand was twice as big as the other. This was really shocking to me, but in fact, this painting had nothing to do with this incident in the end.
自大狂 / Hybris
2024
布面丙烯 / Acrylic on canvas
160 × 180 cm
S: I also saw some pencil drafts below being preserved in some scenes. What are your thoughts on this?
C: I wanted to make the picture look less neat, but in the end, I felt that this time it was still too neat. Try to break it down as much as possible in the future. After completing this work, I realized that the things I often drew were different from my imagination. I would try my best to achieve the imagined picture, and the neatness of the picture may also be due to this reason. I draw with my imagination, but I am also trapped in it, unable to tolerate accidents and differences. In the end, I will only suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
冥王 / Hades
2024
布面丙烯 / Acrylic on canvas
160 × 180 cm
S: Do you think that the processing techniques of the image or the texture brought by the painting are urgent problems that need to be solved, or are they just auxiliary for your narrative expression?
C: At present, it is still used as an auxiliary for narrative expression, but I also believe that the texture of painting is one of the problems I need to solve. But rather than being a problem, I think it's more like an area with insufficient exploration. I always feel that if we treat it as a problem, we will always think of a solution. If we solve the problem and it passes, we may lose some possibilities. I think my thoughts on painting are more focused on composition? I don't know if this can be considered as the texture of painting, maybe I have been searching for a composition method that is even more unfamiliar to painting.
S: Do you think you're drawing?
C: It's hard to say, I hope to have fun through drawing. Good luck. Have fun.
Chen Yingzhou, born in Shenzhen, Guangdong in1995, graduated from the Third Studio of the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2019 and the Maryland Academy of Arts in 2021. Chen Yingzhou is committed to combining the image making thinking of Internet users and the drawing thinking of traditional easel painting to create works. He tries to use meme,trolling, mash up, kitchen sink and other early Internet content creation thinking to dispel political ideology, hot current afairs, philosophy and religion. The form of works is similar to caricature and pop art. Manual imitation of computer electronic drawing effect, combined with visual elements of comics and illustrations. His works have been collected by Guangdong Contemporary Art Center, X Museum,Start Museum, etc.
He has participated in solo exhibition include:Cerebral Asphyxia, Keyi Gallery,(Hefei, 2022). His group exhibitions include:"The World as Will and Representation", Keyi Gallery, (Beijing, 2023); "The Pervert's Guide to Painting", Simulacra Space, (Beijing, 2022); "Whether in full bloom or not, All flowers are flowers", Keyi Gallery, (Hefei, 2022); "Community of Feeling Emotional Patterns in Art in Post-1949 China", Inside-Out Art Museum, (Beijing, 2019); "Nose Art Project Group Exhibition | Believe It", Aotu Space, (Beijing, 2019); "When I was just riding a bike, someone asked me the way. Is there a park in front of me?", Keyi Gallery, (Hefei, 2019); "Phase I of Jasagala", Exhibition Hall of Printmaking Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts, (Beijing, 2017), etc.
KeYi Gallery is a young contemporary art space established in 2019. It aims to create an open and experimental platform for artists and dedicates to promoting diverse unique art programs and works of art, exploring and developing young artists. KeYi Gallery gave priority to private collections previously and has been insisting on collecting contemporary artworks with high academic value while concentrating on art trends in the art world.
