The first Art Basel Hong Kong will take place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) from May 23 to 26, 2013. Chen Ke and her highly personalized style has become an iconical representative amongst the new generation of young Chinese artists. This time, Star Gallery will present Chen Ke's solo exhibition entitled Frida: A Woman to be on display for the first time at the Insights Section of Art Basel Hong Kong. This series will portray the artist's development into a new phase of artistic creation.
Born in 1907 the Mexican female artist, Frida, lived a legendary life to become one of the world’s most recognized female artists. By chance, Chen Ke came across Frida's photo album featuring Frida and her friends’ lives. Chen became deeply fascinated in the images, where the female artist is no longer described as a rebellious figure, but as a warm and ordinary woman. Time and life experiences are important to Chen's work, thus Frida's pictures deeply touched her and urged her to pick up the brush and redraw the images in her own style.
In addition, Chen Ke will be making interesting attempts in the presentation of her work. Her work will be presented through the construction of "The Room" at the art fair. In this room, she will display three-dimensional works in combination with her series of sketches and manuscripts, including elements of a Mexican aura, which combined with her finished oil works, will portray the artists' journey in an unenclosed style. Although the two women live in different time periods and surroundings, Chen Ke's paintings form a dialogue across time and space through their common consideration towards experience and life as an artist, and pursuit in the arts.
Chen Ke was born in TongJiang county, Sichuan in 1978, and spent eleven years from middle to graduate school studying in the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. She currently lives and works in Beijing and is known as a representative to the post-1970's female artists. Her caricatures have unique round noses portraying depressed and self-enclosed personalities, who remain content living in their delusory spaces of purity. The artists' distinctive style, combining comic illustrations with tradition, reveals an inner world amidst reality and illusion. Chen Ke is always exploring new forms of expression, particularly through media. In 2007 Chen Ke had her first solo exhibition, With You, I Will Never Feel Alone at Beijing's Star Gallery and the Italian Marella Gallery; 2009 her Another Me on the World exhibition held at Germany's Kunsthaus Viernham; Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in 2010; and Open House: A Room of One's Own, a joint project with ChART Contemporary held in Star Gallery, Beijing. In 2012 she published an illustrated autobiographical book, With You, I Will Never Be Alone in conjunction to featuring her work at Today Art Museum's Juju curatorial using the same exhibition title.
