Chen Yan Yin

Chen Yan Yin was trained in traditional figurative sculpture at the China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzou. She is currently Director of Sculpture at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute. Shanghai is the centre of international trade in China and historically has experienced the greatest interaction with the West in terms of art production. Chen Yan Yin is one of a new generation of Chinese artists from this region who have broken with traditional ways of making art.

In much of her work, Chen Yan Yin explores the psychological dimension of femininity, love, desire, and beauty. Discrepancy Between One Idea creates a highly physical environment that reverberates between the subjective and the collective, between the internal and the external, and between the seductive and the disturbing. In a spare yet poignant installation, roses are fed intravenously from tubes connected to infusion bags. Although temporarily sustained by the fluids, the roses, symbols of love and life, gradually whither throughout the duration of the exhibition. This installation is a poetic statement embracing the fantasy of desire, love, and eternity, but it also suggests the impossibility of reviving something that is fated to die.

Chen Yan Yin has exhibited in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Kassel, Copenhagen, and Brisbane. This is her first exhibition in North America. Discrepancy Between One Idea was featured at the 1996 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia.

This exhibition is one component of a series of exhibitions in the project Jiangnan: Modern and Contemporary Art from South of the Yangzi River coordinated by Hank BulI and Xie Wai which includes fifteen venues in Vancouver presenting historical and contemporary art from the Jianguan region of China. The project is sponsored by the Annie Wong Foundation and the Western Front Society. Discrepancy Between One Idea is organized by the Contemporary Art Gallery.