Motif Art Consulting is pleased to present a selection of figure portraits from the Zhong Chen’s Pixel Paintings Series. Zhong Chen, an Australia-based Chinese artist, has received his education in the West and built his artistic characteristics on his Chinese cultural heritage.

The pixel paintings incorporate images of Chinese portraits, animals and landscape, each of which is central to the genre of traditional Chinese ink brush painting. By using traditional Chinese inspired images Zhong conveys a sense of his cultural identity. Zhong uses the pixel as a symbol of the contemporary world that we live in. He has combined the process of using traditional images with a contemporary pixelated visual paradigm and the pixel is a symbol of the global modern world. Chen’s images are comprised of the same flat units that we see in the computer, media and in all digital technology. Each individual pixel is flat and combines to make up images that we see in the computer, media and in all digital technology. The flatness in each pixel has a similar flatness to the traditional Chinese woodblock prints. By using the pixel, a time in place is defined, of not a specific culture but of a 21st Century computer generated global world. Chen leaves the context of his images to a much more abstract setting that can be relevant to any society familiar with digital resolutions.

Zhong was born in Zhongshan, China and arrived in Australia at the age of 19 in 1989. Zhong’s early paintings ‘Stupid Laughing Series’ 1996 conveyed the exploration of his cultural heritage. Since these works, Zhong has continued to explore issues of cultural identity, transcultural identity, belonging and place. Since completing a Masters of Fine Arts from the Chelsea School of Art, London in 1998, Zhong has further explored these cultural issues. A further exploration of traditional Chinese art has influenced Zhong’s choice of using traditional Chinese subject matter in his paintings and thus the pixel paintings were developed in 1999.

Zhong’s paintings let us explore the technology of our time and the contemporary changing place of our society; his subjects are well rendered in a blend of old and new. Kirstan Rann, an Australian art critic once reviewed Zhong Chen’s pixel painting series “By juxtaposition the delicate faces of the young Chinese women against the lurid colors of his flat, monochromatic backgrounds, he plays with notions of “beauty” and “kitsch.” Both strategies seduce the audience into engaging with the works for they cannot be taken at surface level. Complex layering and blending of his cultural and artistic references, Chen brings painting into the present and forces us to reconsider its validity.”
Receiving high reputation and recognition in Australia, Zhong Chen has achieved great success for the past decade. He was awarded for Australia Council Grant in 2005, SBS Federation Art Award 2002, artist residency programs, and many scholarships and honors.
Zhong Chen’s art presents us the fine marriage between East and West, the new and the old; Motif Art Consulting proudly introduces his genuine art works and fresh outlook to the public of the United States. This hybrid of cultural identity and artistic style is much noteworthy and highly acclaimed in the contemporary art market; further growth of the market value can be expected from Zhong Chen’s art works in the near future.