He Sen. Paintings

"The Chinese painter He Sen was born in the Yunnan province in 1968, that is at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Twenty years later he began his artistic training at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, in 1989, the year the democratic movement in China was put down. He Sen's career has therefore been - whether consciously or unconsciously - permeated by transformations which have shaped Chinese society until the present, and ultimately coincided with the ongoing phase of rapid urban and economic growth. Since 1998 the painter has been (almost) exclusively interested in the portrayal of girls and women, pictures which are distinguished by their exact finishing as much as their detailed depiction. By 2000 this precision had achieved such perfection that any further development was hardly possible. He Sen's paintings show anonymous young women alone with no further description, always placed against an undifferentiated and monochrome background. A few props such as an armchair, table, sofa or bed as well as accessories such as a single bottle of whiskey, a glass, a packet of cigarettes, a mobile telephone or occasionally a cuddly toy suffice the painter to depict his models within a space which at most only hints at a room, embellished only by vague shadows or occasionally visible cigarette smoke". Dirk Steimann