About

Xiaozhi CHEN
Chrome

Artiste Statement

My creation exists for me in a space suspended between the "past" and the "future," between "creating" and "being created." It is deeply interwoven with my life and experiences, constituting an exploration of viewing interfaces, memory, energy transformation,and symbiotic relationships.
Restoration, to me, is a science of "seeing." It traverses time vertically, offering me a unique, "top-down" perspective on viewing. In this era of technological mediation, how we, as both "viewers" and "the viewed," redefine the relationships between time and space, memory and imagination, the virtual and the real, is precisely the focus of my work as an artist.
My works often take the form of paintings, sound installations, sculptures, and more. They blend traditional materials like gold leaf and ramie cloth, glass fragments, with modern industrial waste. Gold leaf, since antiquity, has been a medium of the sacred and the eternal, a bridge where spirit is "infused" into matter, "sealing" prayers. Much like the concept of "Ex-Voto" (votive offering) I borrow from folk beliefs, it carries emotions and faith across time and space. It’s not born of nostalgia. In our rationally disenchanted present, I still seek to find points of emotional connection within these ancient mediums that resonate with contemporary fragmented lives and the pervasive sense of absurdity. Through this, I aim to further explore how energy transforms between past, present, and future—like creating a "bug" within the linear narrative of time.
Technique is a means of "taming" materials, but the core lies in intention. Repetitive labor can slip into the mechanical, but it can also reach a state of self-oblivion clarity—that very threshold where creation becomes most captivating. In an age of information explosion and increasingly blurred subject-object boundaries, I attempt to pick up a handful of "cultural ruins"—a mixture of ancient craftsmanship, historical light and shadow, and technological dust—and recast it into my art. I yearn to use this to carve a fissure in our high-speed era, allowing viewers to glimpse the creases of time, to contemplate our existence as symbiotic energy entities, and to point towards latent possibilities yet to take form.

ABOUT XIAOZHI CHEN

Born in Hunan in 1980, currently working and living in Paris and Shanghai

  • 2019-present Paris-Shanghai C Art Studio Manager
  • 2009-22 Paris Atelier DELARCE Art Conservation and Restoration Studio Co-restorer
  • 2018 Obtained the French National CAP ‘Doreur à la feuille ornemaniste ‘Art Restorer Qualification Certificate
  • 2010 Paris Saint-Denis VIII University Master of Contemporary Art and Multimedia
  • 2003 Bachelor of Mural Painting Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts CAFA Pekin

Solo Exhibition

  • 2025 - "Carte Blanche" Réminiscence d’un futur antérieur, Shanghai 743 ART Lab
  • 2024 - "The time of curiosity " personal exhibition, Shanghai Right Art Museum

Group Exhibition

  • 2026 - "After The Reaction", Group Exhibition, Arario Gallery, Shanghai
  • 2025 - West Bund Art & Design, Arario Gallery, Shanghai
  • 2024 - The 11th Art Shenzhen, Qianhe Art Space, Shenzhen
  • 2024 - “Une voie perpétuelle ” group exhibition, Art week SHENYANG 2024
  • 2022 - "Entre chien et loup Chaotic Forest" double exhibition, Paris OVISION Art Space
  • 2022 - XIAOZHI CHEN et VISSI D’ARTE, artist jewelry joint exhibition, Paris La Manufacture Art Space
  • 2021 - "Verre églomisé Painting", PODADA group exhibition, Asnières sur Seine, France
  • 2021 - "L'art s'invite" group exhibition, Asnières sur Seine, France
  • 2019 - "La Parade animale" group exhibition, Asnières Castle, France

Works collected

  • 2026 - Shanghai Heyuhe Design Studio Space Design Artwork Collection Project, Shanghai.
  • 2025 - Project 'The Sleep of Reason Generates Monsters' of the Artist's Residence, Samatan France.
  • 2025 - Public Art Installation "Harmony with the Light and Dust" Was Designed for the Beijing EP YAYING Project by the French Architectural Firm FRANCLIN AZZI ARCHITECTE.
  • 2025 - "Dust Mirror Series - A Vacant Space", collaboration with Nong Studio, collection of Lu Xiaoman's former residence in Gaofuli, Shanghai.
  • Institutions and individuals such as Vissi d'Arte Gallery in Paris, France, Atelier Yô Art Space in Avignon.