Ruofan Chen (b. 1996, Hubei, China), currently lives and works in Shanghai. She holds an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY.
Through paintings, installations, and videos, Chen focuses on the intricacy of human emotions and their ebbs and flows by meticulously depicting the carriers that support them and the imperceptible changes between them. Navigating between the multi-layered digital world and physical reality, she caches memories and emotions within her built objects, attempting to intervene in their natural trajectories. Her attention to ecological rhythms related to “slowness” often leads to a construction process characterized by a chronic, non-dramatic, non-lethal state that awaits activation.
Ruofan sees the editable or woven technological process as an organic way to blur the boundaries between virtual and real. On the one hand, she regards the pixels in the digital realm as the foundational matrix of the physical world, while on the other hand, she does not impose the differences between them onto the viewer. In the previous series, she focused on geographic memory constructed by nature and humanity, infusing her own emotions into explorations that probe the subtle relationships between herself and the world.