展览现场，陈飞：是时候说再见，胶囊，中国上海；由凌卫政拍摄
Installation View, Daniel Chen: Time to Say Goodbye, Capsule, Shanghai, China; Photographed by Ling Weizheng
陈飞的个展“是时候说再见”当前在胶囊展出，将持续至2025年6月28日。
Daniel Chen: Time to Say Goodbye is on view at Capsule until June 28, 2025.
爱与痛的边缘——陈飞：“是时候说再见”
作者: 黄童
在胶囊的纯白展厅里，Daniel Chen（陈飞）的画布像一片新鲜湿润的浓郁泥土，那些经由反复刮擦、堆积出的颜料碎屑，如同熟落的美丽果实，厚厚的、茂盛地嵌在泥土里。有一种乐趣弥漫在这些物质性的视觉元素之中，放松了观众的眼睛与想象。这并非形式追求，而更像是一次纪念庆典，庆祝着这位于1997年生于美国阿拉巴马州的华裔艺术家生命经验中不可言说的重要时刻。展览标题“是时候说再见”，取自艺术家父亲生前钟爱的由卢西奥·库兰特图（Lucio Quarantotto）所作歌曲名。这是 Daniel 给父亲的献礼，伴随着歌词“我将与你同往”（Con te partirò’），他郑重地告别了父亲。
展览现场，陈飞：是时候说再见，胶囊，中国上海；由凌卫政拍摄
Installation View, Daniel Chen: Time to Say Goodbye, Capsule, Shanghai, China; Photographed by Ling Weizheng
Daniel Chen 的创作是直觉的，而非设计的。他坦言希望作品拥有“色彩的丰富、生命的丰富、情感的丰富、一切的丰富。”这种丰沛的表达需求，在层叠式的绘画中找到了出口，并且让那些创作冲动、隐秘期待、乃至父辈孤独与悲伤都得到了释放。Daniel 的父亲是一位从中国黄山辗转至美国亨茨维尔小镇的教授，他的旅程是“迫于生存和同化的一代人”的缩影。在《美国公民及移民服务局》(U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services，2024) 中，一片片的颜料碎屑被网格化地拼贴成一面模糊的星条旗的轮廓——这不是作为国旗的象征，而是出于对身份筛选机制的诘问。三十年来，他的父母出于对故土的眷恋，始终希望保留中国公民身份，甘愿悬置也未选择入籍美国，但却因中国户籍制度的限制，成为两国制度夹缝间的“户籍幽灵”。Daniel 的父母的经历代表了一代移民者的集体创伤: 他们在“新乡”(新的故乡，而不是指美国纽约或中国新乡市)的生长空间被标准化切割，在故土也未能得到“根”的祝福。如同在他作品里栖息着的片片颜料，是一种未被收容的乡愁，一种无法沉降的归属。
展览现场，陈飞：是时候说再见，胶囊，中国上海；由凌卫政拍摄
Installation View, Daniel Chen: Time to Say Goodbye, Capsule, Shanghai, China; Photographed by Ling Weizheng
当我们面对一位以抽象创作为主的艺术家所呈现的具象画作时，常常会感到一种近乎僭越的亲密感。Daniel父亲的肖像作品《陈志坚》（Chen Zhijian，2024）在画廊入口迎宾，坦然地展现了这一种张力。这幅少见的肖像画被艺术家定义为“这场展览中所有创作的情感起点”，以浓郁的绿色脸庞为特征，仿佛是被画廊的花园的绿色反射光照亮。对Daniel 来说，抽象画与具象画没有区别，“它们都是颜料。”那浓得化不开的孤独与困惑，并未因画面行至抽象而消退，而是蔓延、渗透进后续所有作品的笔触、色彩关系与结构张力中，掩藏着对亲人深深的同情与爱。绘画即纪念，使转瞬即逝成为永恒。这件作品正是体现了原初的绘画功能：让他父亲的历史超越了时间。
Daniel Chen 陈飞 | Chen Zhijian 陈志坚 | 2024 | oil on canvas 布面油画 | 45 x 45 cm
若说移民背景给了Daniel Chen 创作深厚的渊源，那么其艺术语言的丰富性则来自跨文化的视觉养分与数字时代的无意识浸染。他坦言受到抽象表现主义的物质性启发——格蕾丝·哈蒂根（Grace Hartigan）笔触的挣扎感、弗兰肯塔勒（Helen Frankenthaler）色彩的渗透力、基弗（Anselm Kiefer）画面的历史地质感。如《草结》（Grass Knots，2025）就致敬了修拉（Georges Seurat）的那件著名作品《大碗岛的星期天下午》（A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte）中的“点彩边框”。他像劳动者般刮擦、堆积颜料，让每一道笔迹都成为直觉的行动。而生长在城市与数字丛林中的天性，也为其创作注入了当代性灵魂，从路边缤纷的广告牌，到在线“如何绘画”教程视频。但最终，驱使他将体验、感受和生活熔铸为一体的，仍是对绘画最原始的冲动：玩弄颜料的乐趣。
Daniel Chen 陈飞 | Grass Knots 草结 | 2025 | oil on canvas 布面油画 | 135 x 130 cm
“曾经有一段时间，我担心一幅画太轻，像气球一样从墙上飘走。” 他希望一幅画能有足够的份量感来占据墙面空间，但也要有“空气感”。 他使用双联画就是为了创造空气感的尝试。以《双子龙卷风》（Twin Tornados，2025）举例，左侧面板是他惯用的碎屑式的抽象表现语言，是个人主观感受与情感涌动；而右侧面板是波普化且笔触明朗的具象线条，是被现代媒介过滤的图像提取。它们的并置为塑造时空创造了机会——过去并非线性消逝，而是被当下不断激活、解读、重塑。在现实中，时间是短暂的；而在一幅画中，时间是无限的。在某种程度上，这些画作是过去、现在和未来的融合。“一个人过去的梦想会通向未来。”
展览现场，陈飞：是时候说再见，胶囊，中国上海；由凌卫政拍摄
Installation View, Daniel Chen: Time to Say Goodbye, Capsule, Shanghai, China; Photographed by Ling Weizheng
“是时候说再见”是一位艺术家对至亲的款款告别，更幽微的，我想是Daniel Chen 对固定身份幻象与单一文化归属感的告别。绘画游戏中的刮削、拾取、拼合，恰似各自对应着抽离认知、保存记忆、建立新身份的心理过程。正如歌曲中“与你……与你……”（Con te）所表达，告别的终极不是分开，而是让联结以更坚韧的方式得以缠绕。至此，那些往事和情感，都以某种姿态在画中实现了重聚，它们不再漂泊，而是散发着体温与光泽地，组成了我们这一代群体的爱与痛的边缘。
On the Brink of Love and Pain
Review of Daniel Chen’s solo exhibition “Time to Say Goodbye”
Text by Wong Tone
In the pristine white gallery space of Capsule, Daniel Chen's canvases resemble fresh, moist soil. The paint fragments—built up through repeated scraping and layering—are thick and lush like ripe, fallen fruit, embedded in the earth. There is a sense of pleasure that permeates these visual elements of materiality, loosening the viewer's vision and imagination. This is not a pursuit of form, but rather a commemorative celebration of the ineffable, pivotal moments in the life of this Chinese-American artist born in Alabama in 1997. The exhibition title, Time to Say Goodbye, is taken from a song written by Lucio Quarantotto, a favorite of the artist’s late father. It is Daniel’s tribute to his father, and with the lyric “Con te partirò” (“I will go with you”), he solemnly bids farewell.
Daniel Chen 陈飞 | Driving Home 开车回家 | 2025 | oil on canvas 布面油画 | 40 x 45 cm
Daniel Chen's creative process is intuitive rather than designed. He wants his works to possess “a richness of color, richness of life, richness of emotion—richness in everything.” his exuberant need for expression finds its outlet in his layered paintings, through which creative impulses, secret hopes, and even his parents’ loneliness and trauma are released. Daniel's father, a professor who journeyed from China's Huangshan to Huntsville, Alabama, epitomizes a generation forced to survive and assimilate. In U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (2024), paint fragments are arranged in gridded pattern in vague reminiscence of the American flag–not as a national symbol, but as a critique of identity-screening mechanisms. For three decades, his parents, out of love for their homeland, retained their Chinese citizenship and refrained from naturalizing in the U.S. However, restricted by China’s household registration (hukou) system, they became “census ghosts,” caught between two bureaucratic systems. Their story echoes a collective trauma shared by generations of immigrants: in their “new hometown” (not New York or Xinxiang, China, but an in-between place), their space for growth was standardized and fragmented, while their homeland denied them the blessing of being rooted. Like the floating yet fixed paint fragments, theirs is a nostalgia that cannot settle, a belonging that cannot anchor.
Daniel Chen 陈飞 | A Dad's Letter 父亲的信 | 2024 | oil on canvas 布面油画 | 90 x 70 cm
When an abstract painter makes figurative works, there is an almost transgressive sense of intimacy. The portrait of the artist’s father Chen Zhijian (2024), welcoming viewers at the gallery entrance, embodies this tension. This rare portrait, serving as the exhibition's "emotional starting point," features a face illuminated in green as if reflected by the greeneries of the gallery’s garden. For Daniel, "abstract or figurative… they're all just paint." The dense solitude and confusion do not fade when the works veer into abstraction. Instead, they spill over and seep into every subsequent work in their brushstrokes, color relationship, and structural tension, concealing a profound sympathy and love for his father. Painting becomes an act of remembrance, making the fleeting eternal. This work embodies that primal function of painting: allowing the history of his father to transcend time.
Daniel Chen 陈飞 | Spider 蜘蛛 | 2023 | oil on canvas 布面油画 | 40 x 45 cm
If immigrant background granted Chen’s practice its deep roots, the richness of his artistic language stems from cross-cultural visual nourishment and subconscious consumption of the digital age. He acknowledges the inspiration (on materiality) he draws from Abstract Expressionism—the struggle in Grace Hartigan’s brushwork, the permeability of Helen Frankenthaler’s colors, the historical strata of Anselm Kiefer’s canvases. For instance, Grass Knots(2025) pays homage to Georges Seurat’s best-known painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with its border of colored dots. Like a laborer, he scrapes and piles on paint, each thick stroke becoming an intuitive gesture. His lived experiences amid urban and digital jungles infuse his work with a contemporary spirit—from dazzling billboards to online “how to paint” tutorials. Ultimately, what drives him to fuse expression, perception, and life is the most primal urge of all: the joy of playing with paint.
Daniel Chen 陈飞 | Twin Tornados 双子龙卷风 | 2025 | oil on canvas 布面油画 | 170 x 260 cm (diptych 双联画)
“There was a time when I worried that a painting might be too light, like a balloon drifting off the wall.” He wants a painting to have enough volume to occupy wall space, yet also to feel airy. His use of diptychs is an attempt to create paintings that can breathe. In Twin Tornados(2025), for example, the left panel is abstract, inlaid with his signature paint fragments to channel personal emotion and sensibility, while the right panel features clear, Pop-ish figurative contours—imagery filtered through modern media. This juxtaposition creates an opening for a temporal dialogue: the past does not disappear linearly but is constantly reactivated, interpreted, and reshaped by the present. In real life, time is fleeting, whereas in painting, it is infinite. In a way, these works are a fusion of past, present, and future—“One’s past dreams can lead toward the future.”
展览现场，陈飞：是时候说再见，胶囊，中国上海；由凌卫政拍摄
Installation View, Daniel Chen: Time to Say Goodbye, Capsule, Shanghai, China; Photographed by Ling Weizheng
Time to Say Goodbye is an artist’s tender farewell to a beloved parent. More subtly, it is also Daniel Chen’s farewell to the illusion of fixed identity and singular cultural belonging. The acts of scraping, gathering, and piecing together in his game of paint mirror the psychological processes of detaching from established perceptions, preserving memories, and forging new identities. As the lyric “Con te… Con te…” implies, ultimately farewell is not separation, but connection reforged stronger. In this way, past experiences and emotions are reunited on the canvas. They are no longer adrift but radiant with warmth, occupying the liminal space of our generation's love and pain.
关于艺术家
ABOUT THE ARTIST
陈飞于1997年出生于美国阿拉巴马州亨茨维尔，现居中国上海。他毕业于罗德岛设计学院油画专业，并获得Florence Lief奖。他的创作基于他对亲历生活的热诚记录，并运用抽象表达让司空见惯的静物油画变得出其不意。承载着时光流逝的独特笔触构建了陈飞直觉驱使的作画过程，这种创作方式与油画本身鲜艳的色彩、俏皮的风格和绘画语言的糅合给人带来的愉悦印象形成反差。颜料在他的画作中返璞归真——它们亦为油彩，亦为物件，亦为传情达意的媒介。
Daniel Chen (b. 1997, Huntsville, Alabama) is an artist currently based in Shanghai, China. He received his B.F.A. in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was awarded the Florence Lief Award. An earnest documentation of a lived life underpins his practice, and exploits abstraction to divert expectations away from the familiar still-life. The intuitive process of painting is built up through individual strokes carrying demarcations of time that oppose the expectation of joy the paintings initially bring from their playful appearance of vibrant colors and combination of painterly languages. The paint is simply functioning as paint – paint as paint, paint as object, paint as communicative, or paint as emotive.
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