Decoding creativity

Zhu Qingsheng (middle), curator of the show. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In The View, animated ink-brush paintings of day-to-day scenes, such as abandoned railways, bare tree branches and night views, are projected on four standing screens that form a circle. When visitors stand before the screens, their silhouettes become part of the works.

Chen once said: "What we see is not what we think. What we want to see is not what we are supposed to see."

His wife Luo Qingmin says that in his last days, when he was sick, he was even more sensitive to the surrounding scenery, religion and life, and she says that Chen used the circle of four screens to indicate the circle of life, "a timeless feeling like that of lights at night".

Meanwhile, new media artist Tian Xiaolei from Beijing, who was born in 1982, takes a visual approach to expressing his understanding of the relationship between people and their environment that has been reshaped by technological progress.

His work Eternity shows a 3-minute-long animation.

He creates "an imagined utopia", in which there is no distinction between a human and a robot: They work together, they fight each other, and they fall in love.

With the assistance of virtual reality technology, viewers "enter" a surreal world and "embrace an uncertain future for human society", says Tian.

Zhou Yan, who was the curator of Tian's recent exhibition in Toronto, says his output celebrates social landscapes that have been transformed by computers, mobile phones and the internet, but also reveal the anxieties and loneliness deep in people's hearts.