Notes
Executed in 1998.This is number 2 from an edition of 8.
The Taiwanese sculptor Li Chen seeks to make art that has a spiritual space fixed within its powerful physical presence. By bringing the spiritual and the sculptural together in his figurative and narrative work Li hopes that the philosophical nature of his work will enrich people's lives. While his art is of a deeply serious nature, his fusion of traditional Buddhist styles and contemporary ideas has resulted in work that is both humorous and full of irreverent wisdom, as well as brimming with the vitality of life and its unpredictable nature. -Ian Findlay Brown It was in the dynamic and rapidly developing artistic ferment of the 1980's that Li Chen began his career, basically self-taught but filled with the determination to make his mark as a sculptor. "I wanted to be a painter initially," he says. "But for me it was just two-dimensional. If I was making sculpture, there were more possibilities for me to express my vision of my experience and the world around me. I wanted to sculpt because I could touch it and hold it. Sculpture has the power of reality that painting doesn't have."[1] Born in 1963 in Yunlin, Taiwan, Li Chen majored in arts and crafts at high school and began to learn about modern sculpture under the guidance of Hsieh Tong-liang at the beginning of the '80's. For Li, however, it was not the multiplicity of contemporary sculptural forms then receiving attention in his native country that attracted him, but rather traditional Buddhist figurative sculpture. Li's experience making traditional Buddhist icons was, in essence, his real apprenticeship as a sculptor, giving him a thorough grounding in the fabrication of religious figures and the discipline of working with materials. Li would subsequently breathe new life into traditional Buddhist sculpture, taking it beyond the merely religiously significant and to a more personal level with which ordinary people can easily identify. "When I started to make my own work, I still worked with traditional Buddhist sculpture. But the style that began to evolve was not one made to intentionally attract people. It was one that represented my own spirit. By 1992, I began to feel the need to create something that was different from the traditional, and I made only one piece a year until 1997. My early works weren't really developed because, after all, the traditional is a burden. It is not easy to break away from tradition. Tradition is safe. The first difficulty for me was to liberate myself from the tradition of Buddhist sculpture. It took me seven years to break from the tradition, to feel that I had found my own sculptural voice. From then on I felt free." Sotheby's is pleased to offer a pair of works by Li Chen that date precisely to the moment of Li's emergence as a unique and powerful voice in Chinese contemporary art: All in One (1998, Lot 140) and Avalokitesvera (1999, Lot 141). These pivotal works of the period look both forward to Li's subsequent practice and back towards the developmental production of his previous years. Indeed, it was with the Avalokitesvara motif that Li began his developmental trajectory in earnest in 1992 with a work entitled Water Moon Avalokitesvara, followed by another bronze Avalokitesvara. But as the 1990's progressed, one sees greater simplification in Li's figures, which become almost Minimalist in their structural details. And from the late '90's on, one also sees a new attention to surface textures: remarkably smooth, almost marble-like forms combined with more rough-hewn surfaces, as in the present works. With his daringly plump, monumental bronze Avalokitesvara of 1999, Li arrived at the powerful but humanizing reinterpretation of the Buddhist sculptural tradition for which he has subsequently been celebrated. As a devout Buddhist, Li remains intellectually attracted to the aesthetics and traditions of Chinese Buddhist art "especially that of the Tang and Song dynasties." Yet since he achieved his artistic independence in the late '90's, Li's modern version of Buddhist iconography has embodied a straightforward and welcoming form of communication, without sacrificing the inherent spirituality of his subject matter. The meditative poses of Li's figures clearly derive from traditional sculpture, but the volume, form, and texture suggest a more modern sensibility. The inspiration for Li's work comes from his own spiritual roots and a search within. His final forms retain a pronounced reverence for the subject matter; indeed, they seem to embody a spiritual presence despite their overt physicality and their pleasantly rounded proportions. "When I do my work, I am trying not to think about the physical reality of it or the structure and the material," Li says. "If I focus on this, then I won't achieve the spiritual or the spirit of the work." And for Li, this spirit is clearly one of peaceful pleasure: "When I am working on a sculpture, I really want to enjoy it. When I am enjoying my work, I want the people who are looking at it to enjoy that experience, too. I am just like a musician who is inspired, then others will also be inspired. I feel that the making of my own work can bring people to a spiritual state where they are aware of joy or happiness, which is what I felt when I made them. I think that there is a kind of love and warmth in my work." The warmth of Li's work clearly derives from its sense of playfulness, one based upon the viewer's recognition and acceptance of the distance Li has traveled from the familiar historical forms his work references. In the characteristic flowing, fluid lines that embrace the fullness of Li's figures, there is an engaging humor and down-to-earth communicative capacity that enhances rather than detracts from central tenets of the scripture. Li Chen seems to strive for - and achieve - a balance and contentment with both the temporal and the spiritual worlds. "To me, the fatness of my sculptures means tolerance and diversity. They are big and include all human beings.... They are filled with the abundance of the world." There is a clear child-like innocence, a generosity of spirit, and a curious, timeless wisdom to be found in Li Chen's art. If sculpture reinforces our own humanity, then Li's work does so in full. Li's vigorous embrace of the best qualities of Buddhism allows us to smile at ourselves and to see the wisdom of seeking peace in a turbulent, malevolent world. "I am not making sculpture. I am creating happiness, something to be enjoyed," says the artist. "I'm trying to be in a spiritual space in my work. And I hope that the spiritual and art come together. I hope often that in seeing my work people will see the spiritual element in it and receive it for themselves. One implication of my work is philosophical and I hope that each piece enriches people's lives." [1] All quotes by Li Chen are taken from Ian Findlay Brown, "In Search of Spiritual Space," and most from the original author's interviews with the artist.
Adapted from a essay by Ian Findlay Brown's essay "In Search of Spiritual Space."
