ye chen

Lives and works in Milan, Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy

Artist statement

My practice focuses on how decisions emerge during making rather than being fully determined in advance. I work across painting, relief, drawing, and installation, attending to how visual feedback, internal images and expectations, bodily sensation and action, and material conditions become intertwined. I often alter the conditions of making: varying the timing and availability of visual feedback, changing how the body moves, covering or exposing surfaces, or sanding resistant materials. Drying, contraction, pigment transfer, and cracking can also change the conditions for what happens next. A surface may become more important than the image I had planned for it; a trace produced indirectly may replace the work I thought I was making; physical fatigue or material resistance may inform my decision to stop. I am interested in how a direction takes shape, is sustained, or changes. Materials are not passive carriers of an idea, and bodily sensation is not simply a subject to be represented. Both participate in the formation of judgement. My work develops through continuous adjustment, with each action responding to existing conditions while also shaping what becomes possible next.

Artwork