Bio

QiuChen Fan was born in Kunming, China. With the offering of CIA Dean's Scholarship, QiuChen started her art journey in US in 2011. She received her BFA in Drawing from Cleveland Institute of Art in 2015 with “Excellence in Drawing” award scholarship. After few years graduating from school, QiuChen can finally settle down and have a little home-based studio to better focus on her art producing.

QiuChen mainly works through 2D medium incorporating ink, pencil, acrylic and collage. With a primary interest of people and the boundaries that exists within relationships, her work explores the co- existence of contradictions, contemporary lifestyles and consumer culture. Being influenced by both Chinese and American communication modes and aesthetic systems, she considers the role of an artist as an observer and art as a way to meditate. QiuChen is currently living in US.

Statement

This group of acrylic paintings is a series of fictitious characters and their interactions with endless possibilities. Without a predetermined scenario, audiences are invited to create their own narratives. The reduction of figurative details to abstract geometric shapes represents a “low-resolution-interpretation”, such as people’s uncertainty about themselves and their simplistic judgments towards others, especially under the impact of media and commercial systems. While questioning our general and careless acceptance of culture oppression from westernized aesthetics and values, those well-dressed figures symbolize the glamorous side of “civilized” social lives.

Figures in the paintings are either blended into backgrounds or into each other, which indicates our confusion and anxiety from chasing a sense of existence and attachment through the whole set of social manners, like how to wear, how to talk, or how to behave. We concern about how people would understand us through the way we present ourselves. We keep asking: what does it mean to be “well- dressed”? what look makes you a “nerd”, too “conservative”, or too “feminine”? We made a word “stereotype”, and we continually accept knowledge to enrich our judgement. In fact, we still make stories about people, rudely or ignorantly. After all, how difficult could it be to create a personality based on just matching criteria from fashion magazines? As Karl Lagerfeld said, “The clothes don’t have to suit you; you have to suit the clothes.