Colors are always so pure and vibrant. Early color in Chen Wenji's works was at the service of his realistic depictions, however, recently color has become an accessory to his abstraction, and he is infatuated by its subtle changes. A transformation from objects themselves to the projected object has quite obviously been manifested in Chen Wenji's art. The faint lyrical elements in his works have already been diluted by the flattened narrations. This was my initial impression in 2009 after first seeing Chen Wenji's new works in Aye Eastation Gallery.

　　Chen Wenji has always worked independently of all manner of art activities or trends. Unlike many Chinese artists born in the 1950s, he did not participate in the new wave movement of the Eighties. However he has continuously been engaged in making works that leave deep impressions, works that critic Li Xianting once called "a quiet revolution."

　　Artists of the Mao era and of the "New Generation" have all made characters, or people, a central part of their paintings. We have experienced an increasing elitism in politics and seen that economics have become ever more the business of civilians; we've also seen the transformation of the collective experience to the individual experience. Both these transitions have been plainly demonstrated in art. Characters have always been the object of expression and evaluation. In the Mao era, making a personage the central object was to make politics central; nationalism and collectivism were likewise important characteristics of art in that era. But with the New Generation painters, the political core was deconstructed, and characters were replaced by generating autobiographical narratives with the ego and the individual at the center.

　　There is, in fact, two significant convergences in the art of the Mao era and the New Generation painters. These are two important trends, both with far-reaching influence in China: the first is a formalist aesthetic with Wu Guanzhong as its representative, the second is the '85 New Wave movement. Wu Guanzhong's contributions are very clear, he used an formalistic aesthetic language to dispel existing political themes; characters were entirely absent from his tableau, and his painting had expressive qualities. The Yunnan School of painters (Ding Shaoguang, Jiang Tiefeng, etc.) used aesthetic formalism in step with Wu Guanzhong; academic painters likewise turned their realist oil canvases away from political life and returned to their calm studios and homes, thus giving rise to aesthetic portraiture. New wave artists in the 1980s swapped China's already habitual political ideas for western cultural concepts. Either aesthetically pleasing portraits, or formalist landscapes and still lifes, this was the popular expressive style of the 1980s, different from the popular critical style of the late 1980s.

　　The absence of people in Chen Wenji's paintings is his most recognizable characteristic. Other realist painters of his generation such as Yang Feiyun or Wang Xindong emphasize the presence of figures (either in the studio or the home), which already distances them from political life. New Generation painters continue to stress human presence, though individual experience is still more important than collective experience. New Generation art is self-centered figure painting, we can understand it as a mode transcending criticism (political themes or conceptual themes) and expressive narrative style.

　　Chen Wenji's works are synthesized to a very high degree, a formal language of realism and concepts of abstraction have been integrated into one space. The synthesis he demonstrates manifests itself on multiple levels: a synthesis of people and objects, history and symbols, materials and their implications; it also takes as its foundation what Lee Ambrozy calls "duality." Significantly, Chen Wenji's works simultaneously display the synthesis of presence and absence.

　　We must note that Chen Wenji, independent of all trends, has contributed a new model. His is a descriptive model of both the "scene" and the projected image. More accurately speaking, it is a concept insinuated through realist forms, and breaks the metaphysical boundary between the conceptual and the concrete. Herein is the difference from Wu Guanzhong's adherence to traditional expressive model of realistic painting.

　　Yin Jinan is a professor and the Dean of the Humanities Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and art historian and critic. His major publications include Knocking on the Door Alone, Post Stepmotherism, both published by Sanlian Books.