Untitled No. 53003-14
Shen Chen
沈忱
Production date
2014
Object Detail
Media
acrylic on canvas
Measurements
triptych 167 x 366 cm
Notes
Untitled No.53003–14 (2014) layers a purplish grey and the palest of apricot tones in a triptych that moves, like many of Shen’s paintings, from darkness at the top to lightness at the bottom of the canvas. They appear weightless, as if floating detached from the wall. These recent paintings recall Mark Rothko’s pulsating blocks of pigment and sometimes, too, their deep melancholy. Yet Rothko, who wanted his works to express ‘ecstasy, tragedy and doom’, and Martin, who spoke of hers as aiming to represent ‘exaltation’, emerged from very different philosophical and artistic positions. Shen’s practice, despite his broad knowledge of western art history, and his belief that art is a global language that need not be constrained by national identity, is grounded in his Chinese heritage: in Buddhist spirituality, and in the controlled restraint of the calligrapher.
Accession number
2017.084