Chen Gao
- Michael Hanna
- May 1
- 2 min read
Chen Gao is a performative environmental fiber installation artist who has exhibited extensively throughout the Unites States and in London, Milan, as well as South Korea. Recent solo exhibitions include Red Springs Artspace in North Carolina, CICA Museum in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, and Adele Kassab Gallery at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. Collective exhibitions include galleries such as Flex Space Gallery at Texas State University in San Marcos, Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Greenville, South Carolina, and Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery at Coker University in Hartsville, South Carolina. Notable publications include 4N, CAP, Artist Talk Magazines, as well as several exhibition catalogues.
These fiber installations are based on locally-sourced materials and are displayed in a manner to integrate with their surroundings, which usually take the form of landscapes such as a forest, park, or shoreline. Chen also supplements her installations with poetry which serve as descriptive text for the metaphorical meanings and inclinations behind the works. Her installations may sometimes resemble stars or forms of the galaxy as they wrap around trees or suspend in the ceiling through an interior. The concept of her work would be to seemingly integrate art with natural environments and reflecting forms which express various emotions such as isolation or longing for connection with others and environments.
With a shell-like crust, many of Chen Gao’s installations reflect weaving of webbed forms reflecting cocoon-like structures suspended from the air or laid flat on the ground. Her poetry describing her art often entails the installations as clouds, penetrating light, shadow, and revealing a path. These conceptual works reflect an artist yearning to engage with her environments as well as explore her inner psychology through form and the written word. Chen sometimes films her installations in motion and different times of the day, as if they were mechanical constructs, but only influenced by the wind and sunlight against the delicate fiber.
Swing (pictured above) remains one of her most interesting installations which reflects a star-like pattern of delicate patches of colored fiber. Suspended from trees, the artwork lays deep in a dark forest and contrasts with the landscape in color, however integrates through foliage-like and limb-like forms. The pastel colors and patched application reveals almost like a patchwork of notes or scaly surface like the skin of a reptile.
Chen Gao remains a gifted artist who delves into the purpose and meaning of how natural environments as well as interiors have an impact on our psyche along with our relationships with such habitats. Her willingness to craft poetry to accompany the works reveals an artist deeply inclined with the process and philosophical purpose of her creative output. Through intricate fiber constructs integrating with the land, Chen Gao reveals a desire to almost improve or ‘perfect’ nature by applying creativity in harmony with the environment as opposed to destructive acts typical of industrialization. Some of her works reflect an ecological expression of reclamation through depiction of plastic sculptures on the shoreline or pieces of fiber hanging on the beach. Through guided principles and an attention to detail, Chen Gao enhances the quality of her surroundings with deep respect for recreating forms and the expressive essence of nature.
