He Sen 何森
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
He Sen is a Chinese painter. He is particularly concerned with the dilemmas facing China's youth as they grow up in a rapidly changing society. Born in 1968, He lives and works in Beijing, where he also teaches in the Department of Photography and Digital Media at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. [1]
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Date & Place of Birth
In 1968, He was born in Yunnan Province, China
Education and Development
In 1989, He graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing Province, China. Between 1995 to 1999, he studied at Kunsthochschule Kassel in Germany.
Art
He Sen emerged during China’s post-Cultural Revolution years of the early 1990s. Initially painting still-life images of objects that epitomized the nation's growing consumer culture, including toys and western music, he eventually began to include figures in his work, creating provocative, large-scale works that considered the effects of global consumerism on Chinese youth. He Sen’s latest series of photorealist images depicting young Chinese women with stuffed animals continues this exploration.[2]
He Sen has been painting young women and soft toys since 1998. The presence of teddy bears aims to create a tension between a certain childishness and the paraphernalia of adulthood that surround the girls. Eyes are significant to He: his first paintings in this series featured young women whose eyes were rubbed out, blurring their expressions. More recently He has chosen to represent the eyes of the young women he paints, and their bored, melancholy or occasionally smiling expressions are rendered in detail. The "blurring" previously attained by the erasing of the eyes can now be seen in the blue-grey cigarette smoke that curls around their heads, or the shadows cast on the monochrome grey background. The soft toys still feature at times, negating the self-consciously grown-up poses of the models. Heavily made up and often provocative, He Sen's young women seem to be caught between childhood and fully fledged adult life.[3]
(Below: He Sen, Come Together, oil on canvas, 2008.)
Auctions & Acquisitions
For He Sen's exhibition history, click here.
Gallery Affiliations
He Sen is represented by many galleries including Beijing Art Now in Beijing, Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, and ChinaToday in Brussels.
Exhibitions
He Sen's work has been shown at many distinguished venues, including the Chinese pavillion at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
For He Sen's exhibition history, click here.
