ChenHui | Whatever
In comparison to most of her contemporaries, Chen Hui took an unusual path to become a fine artist. Having been denied entry to Central Academy of Fine Arts, Chen graduated from Central Academy of Drama with a degree in Theater Stage Art in 1996. For the past decade, Chen is a make-up artist and currently teaches make-up artistry at Communication University of China. Looking back at her journey, Chen is glad that she has experiences in the beauty industry and is still currently active as a make-up artist. Due to her accomplishments and trainings in the past, she is proud to be able to observe the world around her with a slightly different viewpoint than most artists. This advantage enables and cultivates her idiosyncratic creations on canvas. Whether it’s a man in pink ballerina dress and curly bright orange wig from Vitamin X, or the long neck, wide eye beauty in Coffee by the Lips, or the teenager with a fiery red wig in En Dai Mi En, there is a touch of exaggeration, absurdity, recklessness, preposterousness, and caricature characteristics peculiar to the artist. Most of the figures in Chen’s paintings are young, bold, and energetic people. They represent the new generation that is rapidly and continuously shaping and pushing forward the ever-changing speedy contemporary Chinese society. These new bloods are also people Chen has the privilege of being in contact with through her works in the make-up industry and university where she now teaches. Chen’s fascination and curiosity of this new generation along with their trends, fears, and influences in the society are all depicted in her works.
The switch from a make-up artist to a painter or the overlapping duo identity must be challenging but significant for Chen. Her mannerisms as both make-up artist and fine artist manifest in her paintings. Chen’s love/hate relationship with her root in the beauty industry is also intriguing and apparent in her artworks. The painter often gets inspirations and ideas from her familiar sources such as fashion and beauty magazines and notorious reality television competitions. However, Chen despises the artificial, make-believe, and corrected representations she must deliver to the world as a make-up artist. As a result, the painter in her almost obsessively unveils and amplifies the many imperfections of her models. Consequently, the subjects in her paintings are dramatic, frank, genuine, ironic, and sometimes repelling to their viewers. In Ni Ye and Cha, two young women are posing in fashion magazine cover like postures position in front of a muted background. At a glance, these two women are beautiful by conventional standards with fit figures and refined features. Chen handles every strand of their bright orange and wine-red wigs with care, paints their eye lashes and lips as if she was coating them with mascara and lip gloss, and dresses them in fashionable tops revealing smooth neckline and back. The pair beams with youthful radiance and sexual energy that are normally found in popular magazine cover-girls. However, in closer inspection, the artist also deliberately left her beauties with unappealing traits such as pimples, scars, beauty marks, freckles, tattoo, and multiple piercing.
A common thread that runs through all of Chen’s paintings is the way she counterbalances the two sexes. Stereotypical elements of both masculine and feminine qualities co-exist in almost every one of her painting subject. Chen skillfully stitches up unlikely and conflicting gender characteristics in each of her subjects to display China’s newfangled phenomenon of tom-boyish female singers and effeminate musical boy groups. With keen observance of the Chinese popular culture, Chen notices more and more men are and willing to be on display as sexual or desiring objects in magazines, television dramas, reality television programs and movies. In return, Chinese women are taking on an ever more aggressive role as the spectators. The artist’s concept of gender neutralization is exceptionally evident in Bee-Bored-Bird. Chen renders three bizarre cross-dressing men in a ludicrous and thought-provoking manner. Three eccentric men dress in uniquely feminine ensembles, which consist of low-cut black dress, hot pink one-piece with furry orange fringes, blue sun-glasses, colorful bead necklaces and bracelets, wigs, rings, ballet shoes, anklet, and make-up. Despite embellish with excessive and elaborate adornments, these men can only come close to quirky drag queens. Like most of the figures in her paintings, the trio is plentiful of sarcastic contradictories. Chen ruthlessly and intentionally portrays the wrinkles on their foreheads, dirt on the ballet shoes, veins, bushy eye browns, and unshaven legs in order to demonstrate their opposing masculinity and oddity. In addition, these dressed up men are intentionally placed in front of a simple background, which resembles the ones in a professional photographic studio. This wittily reinforces their lineage from the fully costumed and made-up men in the Chinese entertainment world today.
Another theme in Chen’s paintings is to reflect the growing desire of people to showcase them selves in public in order to gain fame, money, or simply the satisfaction of being distinguished from the crowd. Numerous reality television competitions for singing, dancing, acting, or family game shows are being shown every day in majority of the television stations in China. Applicants of these contests are from all walks of life, however, particularly loved by people of the younger generation. With great awe and astonishment, Chen paints most of her subjects with an intimidating, daunting, yet confidently fixed gaze direct at the viewers. These young faces are fearless and unapologetic to exhibit their flaws and true self. Chen’s TB illustrates a young man sitting in an erotic pose with his arms open and tug in the back of his head exposing his underarm hair. Moreover, his flashy orange top is hanging loose on his body purposely baring his right nipple. He sits wearing a pair of boxers with legs wide open, showing his unshaven legs. His legs are fold; a small tattoo on his right angel points toward his crotch, provoking viewers with arousing thoughts. Most importantly, this flamboyant model has his eyes fixed onward stare intently at the world.
In her recent works, Chen adds box-like surroundings to her painted figures. In works such as You and Me or Congregation, the artist tones down her palette and attempts to separate her subjects with four-wall structures. Although her artworks are inspired by young people in Chinese society, viewers from overseas often find her paintings speaking a universal language of mockery and truth. Painting for Chen is not merely a rebellious act of a make-up artist, but she is an artist with much to say in her own unique ways.
Claire J. Chak
CourtYard Gallery
April 2007