“I want my work to crystallise a fleeting moment of time—it might be the past, it might be an imaginary future.”
Born: Zhejiang Province, 1980. Lives and works in Hangzhou
Chen Wei’s photographs are theatre pieces, shot in carefully constructed sets that resemble rooms. Often, a disaster seems to have taken place: a meteor strike, an avalanche, a failed love affair. The residents are either absent or hiding—in Phlegm (2008) the only person visible is kneeling in a dark corner, face to the wall. The mood on each set, conveyed by scenery alone, is a compound of solitude, despair and darkness: windows are invariably boarded up, lights dim or broken. The dingy, untidily strewn props seem to tell a story, but it’s left to the viewer to figure out the plot. Chen Wei has likened his works to “chaotic sentences”. Asked what motivates his art, he says, “It’s a secret.” But he himself is not at all unhappy, he insists. “We artists are a minority, so we have to stay positive.”
