INTO THE BLUE
acrylic on canvas, 2017
Wandering through the streets of cities such as Amsterdam, Lisbon, Boston, and Montreal, I embark on inner journeys of discovery. Enriched by centuries of cultural and commercial exchange, these waterside cities unfold like living organisms, weaving vital networks that expand, transform, and metamorphose over time into vast and sprawling topographies.
"Here new architectures bubble up and a return to the sources which create the genesis of these blue monochromes dotted with tentacular hydras. There, aerial views of roads, countries, seas and islands emerge, the close-up of which leads to the incessant journeys of an indistinguishable crowd through the streets, alleys and brooks of these cities and landscapes. So many topological spaces woven thread by thread, which far from concatenating like Russian dolls, permanently interconnect and open up to the world." by Marc-Williams DEBONO
"Jazz and the Urban Symphony: Blue as the Pulse of Life: The essence of jazz is ever-present in Chen’s work, and in many ways, her art mirrors the improvisational spirit of the music. Like a jazz band, her paintings are compositions of spontaneous decisions—dynamic, fluid, and unpredictable. Yet, just as jazz has a pulse that ties the improvisations together, blue serves as the constant in her visual compositions. It is the underlying rhythm, the tonal center that keeps the work grounded even as it sways between abstraction and realism." by Tina LAI
acrylic on canvas, 2017
Wandering through the streets of cities such as Amsterdam, Lisbon, Boston, and Montreal, I embark on inner journeys of discovery. Enriched by centuries of cultural and commercial exchange, these waterside cities unfold like living organisms, weaving vital networks that expand, transform, and metamorphose over time into vast and sprawling topographies.
"Here new architectures bubble up and a return to the sources which create the genesis of these blue monochromes dotted with tentacular hydras. There, aerial views of roads, countries, seas and islands emerge, the close-up of which leads to the incessant journeys of an indistinguishable crowd through the streets, alleys and brooks of these cities and landscapes. So many topological spaces woven thread by thread, which far from concatenating like Russian dolls, permanently interconnect and open up to the world." by Marc-Williams DEBONO
"Jazz and the Urban Symphony: Blue as the Pulse of Life: The essence of jazz is ever-present in Chen’s work, and in many ways, her art mirrors the improvisational spirit of the music. Like a jazz band, her paintings are compositions of spontaneous decisions—dynamic, fluid, and unpredictable. Yet, just as jazz has a pulse that ties the improvisations together, blue serves as the constant in her visual compositions. It is the underlying rhythm, the tonal center that keeps the work grounded even as it sways between abstraction and realism." by Tina LAI
On the studio's floor in Paris, France, 2022
Solo Exhibition "Into the Blue" at Julia Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, 2023
Exhibition "Entre (Fil)les" at Wagner Gallery, Paris, France, 2022
27 septembre 2023
Au-delà du Bleu
Marc-Williams DEBONO
chercheur en neurosciences, poète et essayiste
Pénétrer dans le bleu intense que nous offre CHEN Mei-Tsen, c’est partir à l’aventure, parcourir un carnet de voyages chargé de souvenirs riches en émotion, encrés, topographiés, chéris et lézardés. On est pris dans la toile, le paradoxe de l’errance et de l’inscription dans un territoire. On suit les empreintes, cartes, réseaux, tumultes, sinuosités à foison qui construisent l’identité première. On se prend à épouser les formes, déployer l’architectonique racinaire jusqu’à un point de rupture qui prend aux tripes tout en ouvrant des horizons. Car la trace est là, tenace, rhizomique, qui invite à pénétrer chaque interstice, à parcourir artères, futaies, synapses, mondes flottants, smart cities comme urbanités reculées. Des kilomètres d’inspirations confluentes qui nous portent au sein de l’œuvre, dans son historicité : Taipei chaque fois revisitée...
Ici bouillonnent des architectures nouvelles et un retour aux sources qui font la genèse de ces monochromes bleus parsemés d’hydres tentaculaires. Là, émergent des vues aériennes de routes, pays, mers et ilots de terre dont la vue rapprochée conduit aux parcours incessants d’une foule indiscernable à travers les rues, ruelles et rus de ces cités et paysages. Autant d’espaces topologiques tissés fil après fil, qui loin de se concaténer à l’image de poupées russes, s’interconnectent en permanence et s’ouvrent au monde.
Or, c’est de Gaia qu’il s’agit, d’une terre vivante qui respire et grouille de créatures indissociables de leur tissu-mère. L’œuvre y pénètre, épouse chaque contour, se mue tantôt en Gorgone, tantôt en hôte permanente de la nature. Rapport mésologique au monde qui invite à repenser les liens intimes entre l’être et le milieu, le minéral et le végétal, l’homme et son habitat. Laisser transparaître l’histoire, l’amour et les sentiments au travers de ponts écouménaux : tel est le pari de l’artiste voguant des plants architecturaux de sa maison natale à la dense végétation des forêts urbaines.
Où nous conduisent ces flux et reflux lancinants ? A l’exil ou à la cohésion ? A l’unité ou à la dissémination ? La réponse de Mei-Tsen est un entrelacs de Je parsemé d’invites à cartographier, à inscrire le nomadisme, le matériau dans le vivant. Elle explose les bleus comme autant d’affects qui se croisent et se décroisent, de certitudes des sources entourées de volutes blancs matérialisant les trajets infinis de ses divagations. Les villes se succèdent et s’emboîtent les unes dans les autres. Les cultures se dévoilent. Les géographies se replient – trouées dans le ciel – prenant sens, comme survolées par St Exupéry. Chassé-croisé entre altérité et identité qui l’amène à passer du vécu à l’à-venir, du grand-angle à la fine ramure qui strie les papillons. Toute pensée y devient éphémère. Tout ancrage, vain. On a plus qu’à s’abandonner à ce vide-plein.
Cette imprégnation infuse tout au long du récit et ne peut que nous atteindre, tant on ressent le cœur battant de la cité, l’évanescence des nuages, ses poussées ventrales : souvenirs enfouis débordant tout l’espace, aléas des errances, atmosphère du Lieu...
Des blueprints à Paradise s’entremêlent ainsi les arborescences qui font l’œuvre. Le réseau est tissé. On s’y enracine, on s’y démène, on s’y noie. Luxuriance végétale fusionnant avec les artères de la cité, déclinaison de bleus d’outremer parsemée d’éclairs métaphoriques, dédale de ramifications neurales aux couleurs chaudes... Rencontres matinées de lianes, de racines, de viscères et de sang, au sens où bouillonne une vie nouvelle, une esthétique unique amenant le paysage, avec sa cohorte d’émotions, à affleurer la mappemonde.
Le pont invisible tendu par Mei-Tsen entre les toiles apparaît ainsi pas à pas dans nos imaginaires. Il gagne en amplitude, renoue avec le vivant, murmure l’indicible et l’émerveillement.
27 September, 2023
Beyond the Blue
Marc-Williams DEBONO
neuroscientist, poet and essayist
To enter the intense blue that CHEN Mei-Tsen offers us is to embark on an adventure, to journey through a travel diary filled with memories rich in emotion—inked, mapped, cherished, and cracked by the passage of time. We are caught in the web, in the paradox
of wandering and being inscribed within a territory. We follow footprints, maps, networks, tumults, and countless winding paths that construct a primary identity. We find ourselves embracing these forms, unfolding a root-like architecture toward a breaking point that
grips us to the core while opening up new horizons. For the trace is there, tenacious and rhizomatic, inviting us to enter every interstice, to travel through arteries, forests, synapses, floating worlds, smart cities as well as remote urban settlements. Countless converging inspirations carry us into the work, into its historicity: Taipei, revisited time and again…
Here, new architectures surge forth alongside a return to the sources that give rise to these blue monochromes dotted with tentacular forms. There, aerial views of roads, countries, seas, and islands of land emerge; seen up close, they lead to the incessant journeys of an indistinguishable crowd moving through the streets, alleys, and streams of these cities and landscapes. So many topological spaces, woven thread by thread, which, far from nesting within one another like Russian dolls, remain permanently
interconnected and open themselves to the world.
Yet it is Gaia that is at stake: a living Earth that breathes and teems with creatures inseparable from the living fabric that sustains them. The work enters this world, following every contour, at times transforming itself into a Gorgon, at times becoming a permanent
host of nature. This mesological relationship to the world invites us to rethink the intimate connections between being and environment, mineral and vegetal, human being and habitat. Allowing history, love, and feelings to show through ecumenal bridges: such is the artist’s undertaking, moving from the architectural plans of her childhood home to the dense vegetation of urban forests.
Where are these throbbing ebbs and flows leading us? To exile or to cohesion? To unity or to dissemination? Mei-Tsen’s answer is an intertwining of “I”s, punctuated by invitations to map, to inscribe nomadism and materiality within the living. She unleashes the blues asso many affects that intersect and diverge, as certainties of origins surrounded by white vortices that materialise the infinite paths of her wanderings. The cities follow one another and fit into each other. Cultures reveal themselves. Geographies fold back upon
themselves—punctured openings in the sky—taking on meaning as though viewed from above by Saint-Exupéry. A constant crossing between otherness and identity leads her from lived experience toward what is yet to come, from the wide-angle view to the fine
branching that streaks the butterflies. Every thought becomes ephemeral. Every anchoring, futile. All that remains is to surrender ourselves to this empty-fullness.
This impregnation permeates the entire narrative and cannot fail to reach us, as we sense the beating heart of the city, the evanescence of the clouds, its visceral thrusts: buried memories overflowing the whole of space, the unpredictable turns of wandering, the atmosphere of the Place…
From Blueprints to Paradise, the arborescences that constitute the work thus intertwine. The network is woven. We take root in it, struggle within it, drown in it. Vegetal luxuriance merges with the arteries of the city; variations of ultramarine blue are punctuated by
metaphorical flashes; a labyrinth of neural ramifications unfolds in warm colours… Encounters steeped in vines, roots, viscera, and blood, in which a new life is seething into being, a unique aesthetic bringing the landscape, together with its cohort of emotions, to
the surface of the world map.
The invisible bridge that Mei-Tsen has stretched between the canvases thus gradually emerges in our imaginations. It expands, reconnects with the living, and whispers the unspeakable and the wonder.
Au-delà du Bleu
Marc-Williams DEBONO
chercheur en neurosciences, poète et essayiste
Pénétrer dans le bleu intense que nous offre CHEN Mei-Tsen, c’est partir à l’aventure, parcourir un carnet de voyages chargé de souvenirs riches en émotion, encrés, topographiés, chéris et lézardés. On est pris dans la toile, le paradoxe de l’errance et de l’inscription dans un territoire. On suit les empreintes, cartes, réseaux, tumultes, sinuosités à foison qui construisent l’identité première. On se prend à épouser les formes, déployer l’architectonique racinaire jusqu’à un point de rupture qui prend aux tripes tout en ouvrant des horizons. Car la trace est là, tenace, rhizomique, qui invite à pénétrer chaque interstice, à parcourir artères, futaies, synapses, mondes flottants, smart cities comme urbanités reculées. Des kilomètres d’inspirations confluentes qui nous portent au sein de l’œuvre, dans son historicité : Taipei chaque fois revisitée...
Ici bouillonnent des architectures nouvelles et un retour aux sources qui font la genèse de ces monochromes bleus parsemés d’hydres tentaculaires. Là, émergent des vues aériennes de routes, pays, mers et ilots de terre dont la vue rapprochée conduit aux parcours incessants d’une foule indiscernable à travers les rues, ruelles et rus de ces cités et paysages. Autant d’espaces topologiques tissés fil après fil, qui loin de se concaténer à l’image de poupées russes, s’interconnectent en permanence et s’ouvrent au monde.
Or, c’est de Gaia qu’il s’agit, d’une terre vivante qui respire et grouille de créatures indissociables de leur tissu-mère. L’œuvre y pénètre, épouse chaque contour, se mue tantôt en Gorgone, tantôt en hôte permanente de la nature. Rapport mésologique au monde qui invite à repenser les liens intimes entre l’être et le milieu, le minéral et le végétal, l’homme et son habitat. Laisser transparaître l’histoire, l’amour et les sentiments au travers de ponts écouménaux : tel est le pari de l’artiste voguant des plants architecturaux de sa maison natale à la dense végétation des forêts urbaines.
Où nous conduisent ces flux et reflux lancinants ? A l’exil ou à la cohésion ? A l’unité ou à la dissémination ? La réponse de Mei-Tsen est un entrelacs de Je parsemé d’invites à cartographier, à inscrire le nomadisme, le matériau dans le vivant. Elle explose les bleus comme autant d’affects qui se croisent et se décroisent, de certitudes des sources entourées de volutes blancs matérialisant les trajets infinis de ses divagations. Les villes se succèdent et s’emboîtent les unes dans les autres. Les cultures se dévoilent. Les géographies se replient – trouées dans le ciel – prenant sens, comme survolées par St Exupéry. Chassé-croisé entre altérité et identité qui l’amène à passer du vécu à l’à-venir, du grand-angle à la fine ramure qui strie les papillons. Toute pensée y devient éphémère. Tout ancrage, vain. On a plus qu’à s’abandonner à ce vide-plein.
Cette imprégnation infuse tout au long du récit et ne peut que nous atteindre, tant on ressent le cœur battant de la cité, l’évanescence des nuages, ses poussées ventrales : souvenirs enfouis débordant tout l’espace, aléas des errances, atmosphère du Lieu...
Des blueprints à Paradise s’entremêlent ainsi les arborescences qui font l’œuvre. Le réseau est tissé. On s’y enracine, on s’y démène, on s’y noie. Luxuriance végétale fusionnant avec les artères de la cité, déclinaison de bleus d’outremer parsemée d’éclairs métaphoriques, dédale de ramifications neurales aux couleurs chaudes... Rencontres matinées de lianes, de racines, de viscères et de sang, au sens où bouillonne une vie nouvelle, une esthétique unique amenant le paysage, avec sa cohorte d’émotions, à affleurer la mappemonde.
Le pont invisible tendu par Mei-Tsen entre les toiles apparaît ainsi pas à pas dans nos imaginaires. Il gagne en amplitude, renoue avec le vivant, murmure l’indicible et l’émerveillement.
27 September, 2023
Beyond the Blue
Marc-Williams DEBONO
neuroscientist, poet and essayist
To enter the intense blue that CHEN Mei-Tsen offers us is to embark on an adventure, to journey through a travel diary filled with memories rich in emotion—inked, mapped, cherished, and cracked by the passage of time. We are caught in the web, in the paradox
of wandering and being inscribed within a territory. We follow footprints, maps, networks, tumults, and countless winding paths that construct a primary identity. We find ourselves embracing these forms, unfolding a root-like architecture toward a breaking point that
grips us to the core while opening up new horizons. For the trace is there, tenacious and rhizomatic, inviting us to enter every interstice, to travel through arteries, forests, synapses, floating worlds, smart cities as well as remote urban settlements. Countless converging inspirations carry us into the work, into its historicity: Taipei, revisited time and again…
Here, new architectures surge forth alongside a return to the sources that give rise to these blue monochromes dotted with tentacular forms. There, aerial views of roads, countries, seas, and islands of land emerge; seen up close, they lead to the incessant journeys of an indistinguishable crowd moving through the streets, alleys, and streams of these cities and landscapes. So many topological spaces, woven thread by thread, which, far from nesting within one another like Russian dolls, remain permanently
interconnected and open themselves to the world.
Yet it is Gaia that is at stake: a living Earth that breathes and teems with creatures inseparable from the living fabric that sustains them. The work enters this world, following every contour, at times transforming itself into a Gorgon, at times becoming a permanent
host of nature. This mesological relationship to the world invites us to rethink the intimate connections between being and environment, mineral and vegetal, human being and habitat. Allowing history, love, and feelings to show through ecumenal bridges: such is the artist’s undertaking, moving from the architectural plans of her childhood home to the dense vegetation of urban forests.
Where are these throbbing ebbs and flows leading us? To exile or to cohesion? To unity or to dissemination? Mei-Tsen’s answer is an intertwining of “I”s, punctuated by invitations to map, to inscribe nomadism and materiality within the living. She unleashes the blues asso many affects that intersect and diverge, as certainties of origins surrounded by white vortices that materialise the infinite paths of her wanderings. The cities follow one another and fit into each other. Cultures reveal themselves. Geographies fold back upon
themselves—punctured openings in the sky—taking on meaning as though viewed from above by Saint-Exupéry. A constant crossing between otherness and identity leads her from lived experience toward what is yet to come, from the wide-angle view to the fine
branching that streaks the butterflies. Every thought becomes ephemeral. Every anchoring, futile. All that remains is to surrender ourselves to this empty-fullness.
This impregnation permeates the entire narrative and cannot fail to reach us, as we sense the beating heart of the city, the evanescence of the clouds, its visceral thrusts: buried memories overflowing the whole of space, the unpredictable turns of wandering, the atmosphere of the Place…
From Blueprints to Paradise, the arborescences that constitute the work thus intertwine. The network is woven. We take root in it, struggle within it, drown in it. Vegetal luxuriance merges with the arteries of the city; variations of ultramarine blue are punctuated by
metaphorical flashes; a labyrinth of neural ramifications unfolds in warm colours… Encounters steeped in vines, roots, viscera, and blood, in which a new life is seething into being, a unique aesthetic bringing the landscape, together with its cohort of emotions, to
the surface of the world map.
The invisible bridge that Mei-Tsen has stretched between the canvases thus gradually emerges in our imaginations. It expands, reconnects with the living, and whispers the unspeakable and the wonder.