Untitled (Still-life with a Rabbit)

Wu Chen has painted three rabbits, and this one is his second. He painted this work in 2015, when he moved to Beijing and completed his first solo exhibition. The rabbit’s name is Beuys, and it is a continuation of the artist’s previous work. With the light paints, bright colors, and inverted rabbits that resemble people, the artist tries to discuss the relationship between capital, painting, and the artist through expressive and humorous brushstrokes, articulating artistic creation bound by capital.

Wu Chen’s questioning of the painting system and the sublime is based on the training and skepticism he received as a painter. More importantly, he has transformed the classics into a kind of popular leveling, a self-deprecation that stemmed from being trapped in authority and self-paralysis.