Skyler Chen's second solo exhibition "Danger, Mystery, Love" at Platform China Contemporary Art Institute will open on May 17, presenting the artist's multifaceted exploration of identity, emotions, and power dynamics.
"When young, I might have cared how the world perceived me. Later I realized what truly matters isn't external gazes, but confronting oneself honestly and authentically presenting through creation. If asked about my aspiration now, my answer is: to use my works to narrate the life experiences of a minority group.
There has always been a subtle dynamic in human relationships—an interplay that fascinates me and often becomes central in my work. I am particularly drawn to the tension between conservative ideologies and the basic desires of human nature.
Before I was even born, my parents had four daughters in hopes of having a son. I grew up under the weight of that unspoken expectation. As a child, I expressed a softer, more feminine energy—something my father often tried to correct. I didn’t understand then what I had done wrong. Over time, I came to recognize the power dynamics within my family, where my father’s authority shaped much of our reality—a reflection of the Confucian family structure deeply rooted in East Asian culture.
These early experiences led me to consider how, in any one-on-one relationship, there’s always an element of passivity and agency—a subtle choreography of intimacy, dominance, and vulnerability. This way of relating extends beyond the family into society at large.
I once listened to Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel speak about the elements we continuously seek in relationship love ,mystery, and danger. These elements, though seemingly in conflict, reveal the complexity of our emotional lives.
For this exhibition, titled Danger, mystery, love, I present a series of works that examine emotional dynamics shaped by both action and inaction. These delicate relationships may stem from gender expectations or from the historical conditions that shape how we understand ourselves and others today. Through painting, I aim to trace the invisible threads that bind intimacy, identity, and cultural memory.
Skyler Chen, May 2025
The title references Perel's emotional trilemma theory. These paradoxical elements embody emotional complexities: support vs suppression, authenticity vs performance, freedom vs constraint. "Are we each other's anchor or boundary?" Human connections can be lifelines or shackles. Chen excels at interrogating the mundane. His paintings conceal raw desires, depict ambiguous stasis, and capture body language suspended between touch and control. Perpetual existential puzzles from daily life and relationships permeate his work.
Such conflicts manifest in the artist's formation through intertwined factors: family, society, body, emotions, history and memory. He projects fragmented selves onto bouquets, posters, food and birds – tender symbols of minimal utopian imagination. Yet behind these meticulously packaged "beauties" lurks the corrective gaze of cultural authority.
This constitutes our collective vortex: finding dynamic equilibrium within structural destinies. Vital forces often emerge from coexisting contradictions. Subtle alienations, contacts and longings carry colonial histories, post-colonial realities, and transnational minority experiences. Today, our courage to coexist with uncertainty transforms identity, power and emotional perplexities into rich, layered landscapes.
