Yuyu Chen was born is 1987 in Shanghai, China. She received her BFA in 2009 from China Academy of Art.
Chen has been included in various exhibitions including her solo show in Karsruhe in Germany and group show in Zurich. upcoming group show highlights include "China Window - big draft of Shanghai" by the biggest collector Uli Sigg in Fine Art museum of Bern, which shown together with Liu Ye, Chi Peng, etc in Switzerland.
She had one year residency in Switzerland, and she currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, United States where she is completing her MFA in Digital Media at Rhode Island School of Design (2012).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRESS
Yuyu Chen is a Chinese latest generation media artist, who was born in Shanghai, China in 1987.
She attended the new media art department in China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China and studied under the well-known Chinese artists and teachers Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Qiu Zhijie, etc. from 2005-2009. Since 2010 she started her study in Digital Media Art department of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the USA for the master program.
Yuyu Chen has been mainly working with photography, video and multimedia installation. In her 2008 and 2009 artworks she was often describing realities about Chinese society. She generally likes to transfer the common sense of people and details from their daily life to a general artistic feeling.
Her recent presentation at Art Karlsruhe 2010 (solo exhibition) shows her strong intellectual and conceptual capabilities and included new thinking of hers about society. The four displayed artworks received an enthusiastic response from a number of curators and from the public.
One of those, her work “Determination to win Victory and overcome every Difficulty” is for example a video installation on a large mixed-media rice mountain. Here she takes reference to a famous Chinese saying and she draws a striking parallel towards the “can do” mentality of modern Chinese. The whole scenery is set up in a highly amusing but at the same time sophisticated approach. As a substitute for Chinese society she lets her many selves and even her shadows working towards the ultimate goal of “moving the mountain”.
The most recent version of “Goldfish” happened within a public project of ZHdK, which involved the artists Barba Rosa and Prof. Nils Rรถller. The concept about this project “Pirate Room” required the artists to transform a public place into their own personal art space. The installation of her“Goldfish” in the profane environment of a Zurich restaurant “pissoir” reflects on her inner thinking about her female identity, which provides at times a quite contrasting perspective in the men’s world. It is a very emotional and humorous work at the same time. Being women she feels ambivalent or even at times disgusted by the environment of a men toilet. But Yuyu Chen as an artist is also able to put her instincts aside and to realize the much higher potential of humour in the specific setting.
However, the mere transformation of a toilet, which is even when set within a public space a highly private affair into an art space, certainly presents interesting inner challenges for all of us.
Klaus Hammer
director of Art Seasons Gallery
