In the 2023 painting, Wu Chen accomplished his task brilliantly: while arousing and depicting the power of the spirit, he also endowed it with a broken order, rendering the picture logically solid and credible. As mentioned above, he tried his best to limit the process of creative transformation within the framework of self-growth, summoning his current self to start a battle with his past self. He slyly avoids the homogeneous issue that paintings on canvas in today’s China address: how to deal with the grafting of various cultural heritage contexts. Occasionally, he would take one or two threads from these connections, tell a story, and vigilantly maintain his independence and initiative.

Wu Chen’s game does not establish a threshold for entry. Despite the many symbols, references to art history, and political allusions (and puzzle-solving today is almost seen to compromise the purity of painting), the visual simplicity remains the selling point, characterized by recognizable figures that so approachable that they alienate not a singer viewer.

Wu and Chen are one body with two faces; they are a pair of clones. They have four big eyes in total, all round and very cartoonish.

In the past, the circus would choreograph dangerous and exciting acrobatic stunts to attract an audience, with programs performed by trapeze artists. Once the performers took a desperate risk, they would inevitably make mistakes. If they missed, they would fall from a height of more than ten meters. With a screaming audience, they would land in the middle of the ring and become motionless. The theatre would then fall silent, and all the adults could do is covering their children’s eyes. This is when the theatre director would yell backstage, ‘Clowns up!’ Clowns run onto the stage, twisting and turning, gagging and laughing, just so someone would carry the injured performer off, so the show can go on as if nothing had happened. The classic jazz song Send in the Clowns echoes the inner monologue of the fallen performer, ‘Isn’t it rich, are we a pair, me here at last on the ground, and you in mid-air. Send in the clowns.’ On the tableaus, Wu Chen seems to be the clowns.

We can’t discover definitive answers through Wu Chen’s images. It’s similar to sharing something with our friends; some information gets lost while others emerge in the course of exchange, in the end, the matter becomes less important. This decision also reflects our truthful condition of constantly wavering between humility and conceit, doubt and avoidance in our everyday life.