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Curator: Su Wei

Magician Space is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Beijing-based artist and filmmaker Chen Zhou. Chen Zhou’s work varies from medium to medium like a trail of unconscious thoughts evading expectations of what the role of the artist should be. Fascinated with the contradictions inherent in film and video, his work frequently set up incongruous relationships between images, evoking a disjointed modernity unfolding in the world.

With I’m not not not Chen Zhou, the artist describes his filmic process as a mental journey similar to an encounter with a mystery acquaintance. The script has been dispensed altogether and with this artist double, Chen Zhou travels in-between roles of artist and filmmaker to immerse audiences in a field of loose associations. Inspired by his daily life, Chen Zhou describes his strategy as a look and a step at a time, the artist is curious about the forces of decision-making in the daily world that cause the letter ‘p’ to be printed on a peppershaker or the imaginative logic that coerces two twins to have cosmetic surgery.

For this exhibition, the color yellow is used as an underlying motif. Chen Zhou infuses the color with personal meaning and uses it to heighten the audience’s sensitivity to a meticulously arranged mis en scene. Seemingly an arbitrary choice, it is a mischievous pun on the relationship yellow the color has with the medium of film in China. Rather than a direct reference to pornography, yellow refers to an area of ‘promiscuity’ between objects and concepts apparently unrelated. It is a notion that underlines the artist’s subtle movement between film and art, the plethora of collaborative relationships activated by his work, as well as the unlikely ‘encounters’ instigated by his practice.