“A few months before passing away, Chen toured the Palais de Tokyo with me. Construction hadn’t even begun, but we’d already discussed his exhibition project.” Still reeling from the blow of the Chinese artist’s death in 2000, Jérôme Sans prepared the institution for that exhibition. More than just a tribute to this major figure of non-Western art who practiced an “alternative globalism” before such a thing became fashionable, “Silence sonore” (Echoing silence) assembles a never-before-seen group of major works in addition to drawings and technical sketches. The publication of a monograph by Editions Gli Ori as well as a collection of interviews by Editions des Presses du Réel renders homage not only to the work but to Chen Zhen’s migratory thought.
Translated from French by Jeanine Herman.
