Art Within Reach

Artist / Chen Xiaodan

Chen Xiaodan was born in Fuzhou City, Fujian province, China, in 1962. She graduated from Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute and received a BA degree in 1987. She gained her Master’s degree from the Fine Art College of Shanghai University in 2001. From 2012 to 2013, she was a resident artist and a visiting scholar in France. She currently lives and works in Shanghai.

In recent years, Chen has created a series of sculptures, installations, and land artworks, themed around the images of flowers and bones, continuing to express her understanding of life and nature, and her reflection on art itself as well.

The Bloom Series started two decades ago, beginning from the initial form of flowers, growing like continuously extending vines, gradually exploiting territories, accomplishing a spectacular view, and evolving into an astonishingly rich semantic system filled with complex emotional tension and cultural connotation.

Flowers and bones are the main symbols in her years of creation. For quite a long period, Xiaodan has deeply impressed us with such creations, establishing her highly recognizable and individualized art language and style, and therefore developing her style among contemporary Chinese female art creations since the 21st century, hence receiving attention and compliments in international exchange exhibitions.

Chen is among the few artists who can juxtapose and integrate the power and frangibility of life, two seemingly contradictory states that complement and reinforce one another through her work. Then she created the Great Wall with flowers and bones, which became the condensation of time and life, and developed an acute, vivid, powerful, and unique art language. In her works, images of vulnerability and tenderness, cruelty and melancholy, compose a contrast that is flowery and singular, and the cycle of life and death seems natural and inevitable in her works.

The shanshui in Beyond Shanshui has multiple meanings: it not only indicates classic Chinese literati landscape, which exists as the experience background of art education for Xiaodan and a reference point of her art consideration; but also embodies her comprehension and identification of another older "shanshui", which could be traced back to the mythic landscape before Han and Tang Dynasties and the landscape from the ancient Book of Classic of Mountains and Seas.

It also includes those experiences during the life journey, as those things that she has walked through, seen, heard, and encountered are vivid and lively "landscapes" as well. Applying her favorite and skilled materials and forms, Xiaodan not only continues to manifest her comprehension and paraphrasing about self, life, and time, but also expresses her long-term multiple contemplations about female, society, history, and Sino-western cultures.

Selected Group Exhibition

2023, Not Limited by External Objects, Chantilly Art Center, Shanghai, China
2022, A Dialogue with Sensibility, Being Art Museum, Shanghai, China 
2021, The Spirit of Ceramics-2021 Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale, Jingdezhen Ceramic University Museum, Jingdezhen, China; From Clay to Wards, Ceramics as Media, Shanghai Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Passing on Hundred Years of Art, Being Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Right Now Right Here Stand by Her, Duolun Modem Art Museum, Shanghai, China 
2020, Encounter, Ke Art Museum, Shanghai, China; 2020 Being Art Library, Being Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Snoopy 70th Anniversary, MOCA Shanghai, China; An Ordinary Spring, Wu Tong Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2018, Material Consequences-Ceramic Art from China, Norway, Denmark and Canada, Bergen Kunstgarasjen
2017, Second Chances: Ceramic Arts of China, Norway, Denmark, and Canada, Shanghai Wuchangshuo Memorial Hall
2015-2016, The New Dynasty, Nov. 2015, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
2014-2015, Beyond G(1)aze, Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum, Suzhou, China, KODE, Art Museums of Bergen
2013, Voice of the Unseen-Chinese Independent Art, Collateral Event of the 55th International Art Exhibition, Venice Arsenal, Italy
2012, 4th Guangzhou Triennial | 1st Project Exhibition: De-Fascinating the Chinese Imagination, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
2006, Floweriness, Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing, China
2004, Dreaming of the Dragon's Nation-Contemporary Art Exhibition from China, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland
1993, Chinese Biennial Oil-Painting Exhibition, China National Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing, China

Selected Solo Exhibition

2020, Yaun Art Museum, Chongqing, China; Bai and Yun Art Museum, Mountain Mogan, China
2019, Being Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2016, Virtuell Visuell e.v. Dorsten, Germany; Duolun Modem Art Museum, Shanghai, China     
2015, OOH LA ART, Shanghai, China; XLY MOMA, Chengdu, China; Shanghai Wutong Art Museum, Shanghai
2014, Creative Capital International Art Festival, Wuhan, China
2013, National Art College of Limoges, Limoges, France
2012, International Art City of Paris, Paris, France; The Eastern Bund Art Space, Shanghai, China; The Bazaar Compatible, Shanghai, China
2011, LDX Contemporary Art Center, Beijing, China
2008, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China

courtesy of the artist