Ming Chen

Floor, Trace, Drawing

Graphite pencil, colored pencil, incense, tea, dancing, interactions

2025

9 × 15 ft

Ode to Bowerbird

Welded steel, cut wood, yarn, ceramics, found objects, a poem, wire

2024

2.5 x 4.5 ft

What emerges

"Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom" - Leonardo da Vinci

Oil on canvas

2 x 4.5 ft

2024

Drawings (2023)

In these drawing, I embrace the drawing process itself as a method of exploration rather than as a vessel for an obscure meaning. I experimented with working without a plan or structure, and instead in an intuitive way leaning into impulsive desires to make certain marks as well as employing stream of consciousness writing as a mark itself. The works shifts between abstraction and representation emphasizing texture, movement, and a sense of freedom; freedom both in the forms and freedom from the imposition of meaning or narrative.

Through this intuitive way of working, I am allowing room for play and resisting control, but to a certain extent, I am also manufacturing play. In an attempt to evade control and the imposition of narrative or specified meaning, I have ironically controlled the image and it’s meaning as well. To me, this brings up the question of what is the relationship between the aesthetics of play, and play itself?

Oil on Canvas

4 ft x 6 ft

2022

Screen Shot 2023-06-12 at 1.29.36 PM.png

Blue Portraits

These small-scale oil paintings were made on commission during 2020-2021 to raise funds to support BLM related organizations. A total of more than 25 paintings were made that also aren’t depicted here.