Once upon a time, in the art district of Jiuchang in Beijing, there was the studio of a young artist whose name was Chen Ke. One day, opening the door of the studio, instead of the canvases and pictures I expected to see, the charming view of a small wooden house appeared before my eyes…. 　　“Entering” the artist’s installation, realized on the occasion of her solo show in Beijing and Milan, gives the spectator the impression of being on a theatre stage or surrounded by old furniture from a house in the late Seventies. Then, if one lingers for a while, some signs, colour drips and painted images immediately open up the doors to a fantastic world. The thought floats towards the imagery of elves, fairies and little girls that magically appear and disappear among the imaginary walls. 　　The house and its objects belong to another time, that are now living only in the memory of those who actually lived with them, but something remains as if a mysterious presence left its tracks and its warmth or an open door from which one can peek in. The curiosity is pungent, just like Goldilocks from the Brothers Grimm’s fable, who enters the three bears’ house and upon finding some milk on the table, doesn’t understand who the house––empty yet alive––belongs to; or like Hansel and Gretel’s curiosity when almost captured by the marzipan house created as a trap by the witch. 　　The title chosen by the artist With you, I’ll never feel lonely almost reminds me the incipit of the Italian song Il cielo in una stanza (The Sky In A Room) by a young Gino Paoli in the middle of the Sixties used to sing “When you are near to me, This room no longer has walls, But trees yes, infinite trees, And when you’re so much near me, It’s as if this ceiling did not exist anymore….” Infinite are the worlds and the fables that Chen Ke paints, but, in the end, they all return to her and her personal experience. 　　Since the beginning of her career the paintings she later became famous for were inspired by animated cartoons and comics, they are categorized as “cartoon” painting. During an interview for the magazine Tema Celeste, she admits the influence exerted on her work by the place where she studied and got her degree: the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts of in Chongqing, in the South of China. As she states, in contrast with Beijing where politics and society have influenced and inspired arts by conferring upon it a narrative aspect, Chongqing has always given space to the artist as an individual, giving him more freedom and letting him ponder simpler and more personal aspects of life, more related to the everyday. 　　“In the Academy, we didn’t have many resources, there were no models to imitate and our works were often inspired by our own emotions and instincts. Animation and cartoon images were something I’ve been in contact with continuously since my childhood. When I started to work in this free and tolerant environment these images spontaneously came up,” Chen Ke said. The realness and the dynamism of the surrounding environment, the days spent with friends, and the delay in abandoning to the own childhood are still evident. The artist’s imagery was then composed mainly of these subjects, these memories and by a visual heritage that inevitably left its tracks on all those born at the end of the Seventies. 　　With the passing of time and her relocation to Beijing in 2005, these images started to become less na?f and became charged with a mysterious and intriguing atmosphere. From bright and brilliant, pink like colours she switched to darker shades and to grey and greenish tones. Every painting seemed to be an allusion to a story, to an enchanted world the artist suggested only the first hints. 　　This different atmosphere, more melancholic and reflexive, is the mirror of sentiments of loneliness and fear that Chen Ke experiences when, after landing in this frenetic and immense city, she feels as she has been catapulted in a world she doesn’t belong to and by which she doesn’t feel welcomed but crushed, tossed around, and abandoned. 　　In the following phase, the artist experiments a new type of painting that leaves large pieces of the canvas white while the figures are encircled in small clouds as if they were comic vignettes. These kinds of artworks are closer to an oriental sensibility in which the emptiness is a preponderant part of the work and source of calm and reflection. To the eyes of a Western spectator these works rise perplexity due to the Aristotelian horror vacui that, related for the first time to the fine arts by the art critics Mario Perz, describes the tendency of Western art to fill and paint every spot of the surface. This doesn’t happen in China and Chen Ke deserves the recognition for holding up an aspect of the aesthetic sensibility of her native culture. These spherical coloured portholes, inside which her figures move, remind the moon and the myths and histories connected to it. 　　However, with this last work, With you, I’ll never feel lonely, Chen Ke has instead regained her personal heritage not only through the medium of painting, but also by using furniture and antique objects as support on which she painted her subjects. 　　The door, the bed, the closets, the mirror, the desk… these are all pieces collected from second-hand markets and basements, dating back to the late Seventies and early Eighties, just when the artist was in her childhood. 　　Going back and visiting her parents’ house as an adult, Chen Ke felt again that sense of familiarity and nostalgia for a period of her life and, of Chinese History, that have since disappeared. At that time, everyone used to live in similar houses, often made out of one single room with simple and essential furniture. Poverty distinguished almost everyone. Under Communism – still visible and real only a couple of decades ago, and not only proclaimed as it is today, in the era of Capitalism – people were used to a frugal life in which the family was a stronghold and an invulnerable virtue. 　　Feeling safe in this kind of existence denotes how, for the majority of Chinese people, belonging to the group, to the mass, and equality (and homogeneity) has already entered their DNA. The desire of distinguishing in the name of wealth lead to changes that turned out to be a discomfort rather than an advantage. We achieved a lot in terms of comfort and consumer goods, but we might have lost that spontaneity and humanity that the artist, thanks to his strong sensitivity, believes as indispensable. 　　“When we didn’t have anything we were happier. Now that we have everything, we feel lonely,” in this statement lies the key to her work. It’s not wealth, large houses, or new furniture that make us feel safe, but the warmth of the beloved. Chen Ke derives this warmth from the little universe she comes from and that she revives through these images of the little girl-doll, a projection of herself and of a dimension, the fable-like one, to which she is returning to in order to find comfort. 　　Realism and fantasy alternate and describe a “little antique world” now buried but that still survives in the memories of those who mourn with modesty and intimacy the flavour and the bewilderment of the “small things” once gushed over by Pascoli and by his “fanciullino” whose trilling voice he was always listening to.