Sijia Chen
Title: City Symphony
Material: Acrylic, Ink on Mylar
Size: 82*52 Inches
Date: Oct 2010
Title: Rush City
Material: Acrylic on Mylar
Size: 88 * 50 Inches
Date: Nov, 2010
Artist Statement
My current works are highly related to the image of the city, which I have spend all my life in. I was born and raised in a Shantou, Guangdong, after my junior high school I moved to Guangzhou for my further education.
For me, city is about palimpsest, in which everything is on top of each other. When we are walking in a city, especially a big city, we don’t have a chance to see a whole image of one thing, like a building, even when it’s right next to us, there’s always something in front of it, no sight of the horizontal line.
Developments such as Google maps, GPS, and iPhones help us to find our ways in cities, they give us more access to information, but we are often still confused or lose our way.
My work depicts my impression of the busy but lively cities I have inhabited. The paintings are influenced by the technology I use in navigating the city I currently live in, Philadelphia. The paintings express the complicated feeling I have about cities.