A+ Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of Chen Yufan and Chen Yujun’s solo exhibition “Mulan River-Voyage” on April 28th at Asia Art Center Taipei II. This is the first time the brother artist duo bring their significant project “Mulan River” to Taiwan since their collaboration in 2008. This exhibition will continue until June 3rd, 2018.
Chen Yufan and Chen Yujun came from Putian, Fujian, where the drifting Mulan river runs across artists’ hometown, Putian，and flows into Taiwan Strait. This is a geographical waterway that connects Taiwan and Fujian, yet at the same time, it’s also a migrating route, where the origin of Min clan are scattered and separated from here to Nanyang (South Ocean) area’s various parts. Since 2008, “Mulan River” project has been exhibited in various countries and regions from east to west across the borders. In 2017, artists bring “Mulan River- Cuò” to Petach Tikva Museum Art Museum in Israel, where the fragments of household elements slowly unfold artists’ nostalgic reminiscences of their hometown in a distant foreign land. This time, “Mulan River” project voyages across the running river, and finally lands on the other side of Putian, Taiwan. By bringing “Mulan River” project to Taiwan, for the artists, therefore is a search for the origin, a return to fragmented migrating history, and more importantly, a revisit to the shattered distant homeland memory. And for us who reside on the other side of the seashore, “Mulan River-Voyage” therefore brings a temporary moment of tranquility and ease into our complex and mixed ethnical identities. Yet the shared identity, interconnected Mintai ancestral kinship and culture reciprocally resonate and touch a part on Taiwan’s diverse and varied ethnics.
Continuing the logic trajectory of “Mulan River” project, artists thread elements of household parts, rivers, woods, and canoes into their artistic creation. The featured installation piece “Mulan River-Voyage”, is made with various specimens of woods, such as rosewood, old elm, logan branches. They are collected and selected by artists from various regions, and then carefully handcrafted, carved, and assembled into a wooden architectonic interior. The primitive and natural senses brought by the woods, therefore reinforce with theatrical staging composition of the installation work, revealing the traces of Min regional culture. Yet the subtle nostalgia and melancholia that are embedded inside also become the core of artists’ creation. Liberating from time and space’s confines, this work resonates and echoes with the exhibition title “Mulan River-Voyage”, carrying artists’ nostalgic memories crossing the drifting river and voyaging to the other side of shore. Like the stage assembling making process, viewers, together with the artists, seem to be in the process of reassembling our once scattered memories, each fragment embodies a narrative story, and belongs to a certain time and space, in this journey, they are in turn slowly and softly being reconnected and rejoined.
Resonating with the installation piece are the painting series “Been Continued Scene”, as well as the video series “Mulan Drift”. These works continue the use of wooden materials, the portrayals of river, boats, shores and households. In the “Been Continued Scene” series, artists weave their melancholic search with the continued sceneries, forming them into a wandering voyaging pathway, crossing through pictorial land, we seem to become a part of the figures inside the paintings, looking towards the other side of ocean- another homeland of a distant past. Contrarily, in “Mulan Drift” series, the motifs of waves, local religious deities, theatres and the vintage photography of portraits are interweaved with the moving images, though interconnected, they are blurred and fragmented, as if the hazy traces of the memories, ceaselessly searching for a nostalgic moment from another time and space. “Mulan River-Voyage” (the exhibition) therefore bounds the various medium, transforming the exhibition space into a lyrical folklore landscape where waves, river, woods, houses, seashores, boats and the local rituals intertwine and echo with one another, through which the search for memories, the traces of nostalgia, and a quest for return transcend into an endless voyage, carrying artists and us to keep on looking for a lost distant homeland in time and space.
About Artists
Chen Yufan was born in 1973 in Putian, Fujian. Graduated from College of Fine Art, Fujian Normal University in 1997, and from the post-graduate class of Integrate Art Department, China Academy of Art in 2007, Chen Yufan currently lives in Shanghai. His selected solo exhibitions include: Mulan River – Voyage (organized by A+ Contemporary, Asia Art Center Taipei II, Taipei, 2018), Mulan River-Cuò (Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Petach Tikva, Israel, 2017), A Rolling Stone(Arario Museum, Jeju, Korea, 2017), Chen Yufan (Ginkgo Space, Beijing, 2016), White-Chen Yufan + Chen Yujun (Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, 2016), Chen Yufan (organized by A+ Contemporary, Asia Art Center Taipei II, Taipei, 2015), Beyond the White, Beneath the Black – Chen Yufan Solo Exhibition (Anxin Trust Co. Ltd. – Artemis, Shanghai, 2015), Chen Yufan & Chen Yujun-Space Graphy No.1 (AYE Gallery, Beijing, 2014), Mulan River-Unsettled (Zhong Gallery, Berlin, 2012), The Folding Time-Chen Yufan’s Latest Works 2012(AYE Gallery, Beijing, 2012), Chen Yujun and Chen Yufan- Mulan River Project( Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2011), Into One (AYE Gallery, Beijing, 2010). His selected group exhibitions include: Public Art Project-Rhapsody (Wongtee Plaza, Shenzhen, 2018), Frontier: Re-assessment of Post-Globalisational Politics (OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shanghai, Shanghai, 2017), All happens after sunset…(MoCA Pavilion, Shanghai, 2017), Blank Cheque (CFA Gallery, Berlin, 2017), The Exhibition of Annual of Contemporary Art of China 2015 (Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing; Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China; Jiangsu Modern Art Museum, Nankin, 2016), This is Not Painting – Exploring the Boundary of Painting (Asia Art Center Taipei II, Taipei, 2015), The World III in the Third World (Art Center of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 2014), The 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale: We Have Never Participated (OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, 2015), Mulan River-Unsettled (Leipzig Cotton Mill, Leipzig, 2013), Fuck off 2 (Groninger Museum, Groningen, 2013), Mirror and Shadow: Contemporary Art from China (National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, 2013), On | Off: China’s Young Artists in Concept & Practice (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2013), Gwangju Biennale Special Exhibition: Ctrl+N – Non-linear Practice (Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, 2012). His artworks were collected in: The White Rabbit Gallery (Sydney), The Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation Collection (Switzerland), Uli Sigg Collection (Switzerland) and Arario Museum(Seoul).
Chen Yujun was born in 1976 in Putian, Fujian. Graduated from China Academy of Art with a BA, Chen Yujun currently lives and works in Shanghai. His solo exhibitions include: Mulan River – Voyage (organized by A+ Contemporary, Asia Art Center Taipei II, Taipei, 2018), Mulan River – Cuò (Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Petach Tikva, Israel, 2017), The River Never Remembers (Arario Gallery ; Bank Gallery, Shanghai, 2017), White – Chen Yufan + Chen Yujun (Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, 2016), Another Place (Space@All, Los Angeles, 2015), Dynamics of Sources: Chen Yujun + RAPHAEL DENIS(Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels, 2015), Chen Yujun: The Second Door (James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai, 2015), Space Graphy No. 1 – Chen Yufan & Chen Yujun (AYE Gallery, Beijing, 2014), Mulan River – Unsettled(Zhong Gallery, Berlin, 2012), Transitional Room (Boers–Li Gallery, Beijing, 2012), Mulan River Project-Chen Yujun and Chen Yufan( Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2011), The Empty Room (Boers–Li Gallery, Beijing, 2010). His selected group exhibitions include: Visible or Invisible Forms (Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, 2018), Frontier: Re – assessment of Post-Globalisational Politics (OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai, Shanghai, 2017), The Exhibition of Annual of Contemporary Art of China 2016 (Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, 2017), All happens after sunset…(Museum of Contemporary Art Pavilion, Shanghai, 2017), The Exhibition of Annual of Contemporary Art of China 2014 (Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, 2015), Destination( Lempertz Art Center, Berlin, 2015), Sovrapposizioni di Immagini (Casa dei Carraresi, Treviso, Italy, 2015), Within Sight – Chinese New Painting at Post Financial Crisis Era(Foundation Taylor, Paris, 2015), Breaking the Image-Methods in the Treatment of Imagery by Contemporary Artists from China (Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing, 2015), The World III in the Third World (the Art Center of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 2014), The 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale 2014 (OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 2014), Criss – Cross: Artworks of Young Chinese Contemporary Artists from Long Collection (Long Museum, Shanghai, 2014), Mulan River-Unsettled(Leipzig Cotton Mill, Leipzig, 2013), Voice of the Unseen (Venice Arsenale, Venice, 2013), Fuck off 2 (Groninger Museum, Groninger, Holland, 2013), Mirror and Shadow (Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta, 2013), ON|OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2013). His artworks were collected in: Brooklyn Museum (New York), White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection (White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney), M+ Museum of Art (Hong Kong), DSL Collection (France), Yuz Museum (Shanghai), Long Museum (Shanghai), He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen), Arario Museum (Seoul).