DSL Magazine: Issue 6

The relation to the west reflects indeed today’s complex issue of identity typical of the Chinese young generation, trapped between their own roots and the globalized western culture. Born in Zhejiang province, Chen Zhou (b.1987) graduated from CAFA’s Digital Media Art department. His video My Loving Artist – Yu Honglei (2012) could be seen as a work about the loss of the subject. In the video, the artist goes through a pile of personal photos in front of a mirror while a monologue can be heard. He is thinking about a Jeff Koons solo exhibition he saw, and especially about a photo of the artist when he was young, called The New Jeff Koons . As the artist repeats the text, the subject is not him anymore but a friend who saw the show, and Chen says that he likes how this friend described it. Thus there is a transition between the subject (Chen), his friend and Koons. The subject does not think by himself and borrows opinions from others, but in the end, he seems to come back to himself: facing the camera, he acknowledges he saw another exhibition by Koons and became fond of his work. A huge blank echoes this last, abrupt remark. Koons is perceived as the mythic “star” with which people identify, or try to. This could reflect a kind of essential phase in the process of constructing the subject in today's society: “stars” replace God and become the ones who are guiding the course of people’s lives. In that case, Koons represents not only a successful artist but an icon from Western culture, a whole system of symbols that Chinese society might appropriate for itself. Thus, Chen’s work reflects also the idea of a society that adheres to the ideologies of the ruling class, through the symbol of Jeff Koons, but the artist seems more concerned with the exchangeability of the subject, even up to its dilution.