A Photographic Journey to the Childhood

11×14″ Archival Inkjet Prints
On-going Project. A series of 6 prints as Dec 2009.

No.1, 2, 4, 5 were shown in IU Photography Area Show at SoFA Gallery, Bloomington, Indiana, Feb 2009.

Street Photography in China, Summer 2009

International Students at Indiana University Bloomington

14″x18″ Archival Inkjet Prints
Apr 30, 2010, “Photo Synthesis” Group Show, McCalla Art Building, Indiana University

Artist Statement

Despite suffering from long journey, loneliness, homesick and culture shock, thousands of international students from almost all countries over the world come to Indiana University, because of its excellent academic programs and welcoming community. The photographer is originally from China and pursuing the Master of Fine Arts degree here. Starting from his wnn experience, he concerns about the academic and daily life of the international students in their common new home here at IU. Through his residency at the Office of International Services, the photographer had the chance to interview students from several countries and revealed their personality and cultural identity by the environmental portraits.

A Photographic Installation/Performance

Installation with 400 8″x10″ Archival Inkjet Prints

Jan 26, 2010, McCalla Art Building, Indiana University Bloomington

Exhibition Catelogue (PDF)

Artist Statement

“People Mountain People Sea” is a photographic installation and performance project by Yang Chen, a Chinese-born Photography MFA at Indiana University Bloomington.

The title “People Mountain People Sea” is a jocular word-to-word translation of the Chinese idiom “人山人海”, which means “huge crowds of people”. The project originates from a performance during which the artist explored the boundaries of comfort between strangers in a public space while attempting to get extremely close to them to take their picture.

In the installation the artist creates a huge “people sea” by photos from the performance in order to reproduce the crowded, over-intimate feeling of being involuntarily embraced by a crowd.

During the show, the artist performed “bumping into people” again with the viewers in the paper crowd.

Introduction by Prof. Claude Cookman

What is more fascinating than another human face? Child psychologists tell us the first thing we focus on, as infants, is our mother’s face. From this primal fixation, we branch out to every face, becoming experts in reading the subtle shifts in expression made possible by the complex musculature hidden a few millimeters beneath the epidermis of the face.

In his project, People Mountain, People Sea, Yang Chen offers a universe of faces — men, women, children, infants — each one a small reward for our study. Yang’s work synthesizes two major traditions, street photography and portraiture, but it also alters them. His locus of operation is the street, most often in large cities where for a range of reasons, residents are less likely to challenge his camera. Unlike most street photographers, however, he rarely treats the street as a stage for human drama nor as a design element in the composition. Rather it is relegated to background, typically out of the field of focus and occupying little of the pictorial space. Instead, the human face fills most of his frame. This positions his work as portraiture — not the studio or environmental varieties but the more rarely practiced genre of action portraiture. All his images are candid — faces caught on the fly, rushing to work, to the subway, to a rendezvous. Faces preoccupied. Each with an expression that invites our contemplation.

Yang plunges the viewer into this jumble of faces, at first frustrating our desire for contemplation. His installation transforms a classroom at the old McCalla School near Bloomington’s downtown into a pedestrian rush hour as 400 images hang from the ceiling. Visitors are immersed in Yang’s “People Sea” — forced to brush against the prints, forced to confront them from a few inches instead of the normal gallery distance, forced to engage them several at a time. To have the zone of space in which we westerners insulate ourselves so insistently punctured feels uncomfortable. But it also intensifies the imperative to read the expressions on all those faces. In violating the traditional decorum of a gallery space, Yang engages us in a visceral as well as an aesthetic experience. He has found the perfect form to match his subject.

Professor Claude Cookman
School of Journalism, Indiana University

exposure to risk

Photography captures a moment in time like amber preserves an insect: Looking at a photograph, we see a static glimpse of life’s eternal flux. We notice the intensity and direction of a glance, the depth of a shadow that shades a face, or the forced perspective of a busy city street. Photographs contain clues that allow us to experience what the artist is showing. This presentation is part calculation and part intuition. Good photographs hold layers of information that unfold through studied observation to reveal a truth or universal experience that transcends a single moment in time.

Yang Chen’s People Mountain People Sea, a photography instillation at the Fuller Projects, attempts to reanimate the preserved moments that are his photographs by placing the viewer in a sea of images. Chen’s instillation fills the gallery from wall to wall with hundreds of free-hanging double-sided prints suspended from the ceiling with translucent filament. The viewer has to physically push through the dense collection of images that Chen captured while literally bumping into people as he walked the streets of New York City. As the hanging and slowly spinning images part and yield with forward movement, new faces and expressions continually confront you. One feels a loss of personal space once immersed in his mass of images, as Chen succeeds in recreating the feeling of a densely populated city within a gallery environment.

The Fuller Projects is a laboratory for contemporary artists looking to expand their normal mode of working and experiment with new techniques and practices. Sometimes, a less-than successful result exposes the risk of such endeavors. However, all successful artists recognize that the known and comfortable way is an impasse, and that they must tread the fine line between new ideas and disaster. Yang Chen has walked this line and his instillation stand as testament to the reward of taking risks.

Phil Haralam
Co-Organizer
Fuller Projects

FULLER PROJECTS is a venue with the primary mission of providing emerging contemporary artists with the opportunity to propose, create, and present new work. Established in 2002 by Indiana University School of Fine Arts students and located in the McCalla Building, FULLER PROJECTS encourages dialogue on art within the university, the community of Bloomington, Indiana, and beyond.

A Life-size Photographic Interactive Installation

Oct 19-26, 2009
Fine Arts Building, Indiana University Bloomington

Artist Statement

When I wander in the fine art building, most of the doors are always close, which makes the inner space very mysterious.
In this project, I try to break the dividing wall and reveal the secret inner world to the viewers. By recreating it on the hallway using the photographic approach, when the viewers walk by, they can see the inside which they may have never seen before.
This is an interactive installation. It grows with the viewers’ manipulation on the original artwork. Traditionally, in the gallery system, the artist is the only author of an artwork. However, this piece is created by the artist, but the spectators also become the authors, because of their participation. The artist is the starter and can’t control how it goes.
Something interesting is that one viewer wrote“R.MUTT” on the center urinal, which directly refers to Marchel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), the first example of conceptional art.

An Artist Book for Street Photography

Blurb Version Here

A Series of Four Prints
16″x11″ Archival Inkjet Prints
Jan 26 – Feb 6, 2010, SoFA Gallery, Bloomington, Indiana

ALEXANDER WEINSTEIN and CHEN YANG

15″x10″ Archival Inkjet Prints

Photographer/Creative Writer Collaboration Group Show

McCalla Art Building, Indiana University Bloomington, May 2009

Published in Superficial Flesh Magazine

Street Photography in New York City

清华大学96周年校庆摄影展 For Tsinghua University 96th Anniversary

首席摄影师：陈阳 Chief Photographer: Chen Yang

Apr 28, 29, May 7-14, 2007
Tsinghua University Beijing, China

Artist Statement (in Chinese)

自从来到了清华园，就和这里的艺术生活结下了不解之缘。除了顶尖的学术声誉，同学们的多才多艺，校园艺术生活的丰富多彩也让我钟情于这里。
曾经报考过学生艺术团，但是我最终没有成为演出队伍的成员走上清华舞台。后来我选择了拿起相机，从镜头中找寻自己的视角和透视，去记录舞台上的光影变幻，去捕捉动人的闪耀瞬间。
清华大学的艺术生活，我前后拍摄了四年，其中包括演出、排练等各种艺术活动百余场，基本涵盖所有重要演出。不能说我在摄影上有特别的恩赐，但是也许勤能补拙吧，因此我从拍摄的大量照片中挑选了这些“作品”，希望通过本次展览作一个展示和汇报，向同学们请教和学习。此外，龙翔、朱皓珉、叶健提和崔柳同学也为本次展览提供了优秀的摄影作品。
对于本展览的举办，我要代表参展的摄影师们感谢家长和老师们对我们在课余时间进行的摄影创作的理解和支持，也要衷心感谢校团委、艺教中心和学生艺术团对我们长期的指导和帮助。我要特别感谢我的朋友龙翔和嘉艺文化的石家东老师和我一起完成了许多繁杂工作，是他们的大力帮助使得这次展览得以举办。此外，为展览提供帮助的同学还有许多，在此我要向他们都表示深深的感谢！
即将踏上留学的历程，离别也让我对清华园的一切越发的留恋。“水木清华众秀钟，万悃如一矢以忠，赫赫吾校名无穷”，每当演出结束的时候，老校歌的旋律总是让我倍加感动。相信清华的舞台一定会更加绚丽和多彩，相信艺术之花一定会在清华园中更加璀璨的绽放！

Introduction by Zhang Yu, Vice President of China Photographers Association

在清华大学96周年校庆来临之际，我要祝贺“艺韵清华园”摄影展的成功举行。绚丽的摄影作品为春日的清华园增添了新的光彩。
从展出的60幅作品中，我看到了清华园艺术生活的丰富多彩，看到了清华的同学们不单在学习、科研上奋发图强、出类拔萃，在人文和艺术领域同样也有着深厚的素养。这些作品展现了清华大学作为一所综合大学深厚的人文气息和艺术底蕴。
展览的首席摄影师陈阳同学在清华学习期间对舞台等艺术题材的摄影创作，是对校园的艺术生活最为广泛和深入的记录。这些作品不仅在清华学生摄影创作中达到了一个新的艺术高度，同时也体现出拍摄者对摄影、音乐等各类艺术的熟知、眷恋与热爱。陈阳同学透过镜头感悟舞台、品味人生，追寻艺术美丽的精髓和真谛的精神很值得称道。
我衷心祝愿陈阳和清华的同学们能在艺术上不断进取、再获佳绩，让艺术之花在清华园绽放！

中国摄影家协会副主席 张宇