08/16/2018 News and Film
Chinese artist Chenlin Cai ???, was born in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian, and received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in Art at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has worked as an illustrator, art director at the Yuanheng Art Training Institute, and lecturer at Beijing City University. In 2015, he moved to Philadelphia to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he also worked as a teaching assistant.
Cai's work is held in private collections around the world, and his murals can be seen in restaurants across Philadelphia, as well as the South Korean Embassy in Beijing in advance of the 2008 Olympics, and the Xuchang City Museum in China, which encompasses six murals depicting the historical development of Xuchang. Beginning in 2008, when he was still a student, Cai has exhibited extensively in his native Beijing, as well as New York, including the Eye Art 2017 International Youth Art Exhibition at the United Nations Headquarters, for which he won an award.
Cai's artwork rejects the notion that an Eastern artist living and working abroad must allow western influences or markets to change the kind of art they create. Of his work, Cai says he creates paintings, "with visual narratives about relationships between humans and our environment, historic moments, and contemporary events. I try to bring a different visual experience for viewers to ponder the questions about the consequences of human behavior in a wider time-space continuum."
His poetic visual expressions utilize an "unorthodox" mix of oil paint applied to nontraditional surfaces, allowing the artist to "create artificial cellular structures that divide the images into a mosaic texture."
At Freeman's
Beginning September 6 and continuing through October 4, Freeman's will host "Dreamscape: Traditional Chinese Landscape, A Contemporary Expression," an exhibition with works for sale by Chenlin Cai at our Wayne gallery. A preview reception will be held on Thursday, September 13 from 6 – 8pm.