Artwork Appreciation
CHEN Yi-Chia is skilled in eastern gouache and many of his works are inspired from his personal everyday experiences. Fragments and artifacts from his memories such as metal artifacts from Taichung factories are often used as symbols of nostalgia and homesickness. Soft, retrograde tones are often selected to provide sincere and rich emotions.
The Sight of His Back illustrates a scene under a bus stop. The persimmons on the bench happened to be the favorite fruits of the artist’s father, and were introduced to invoke the artist’s longing for his family when away from his hometown. This bright and optimistic figment of the artist’s memory was captured and reimagined on canvas. To CHEN Yi-Chia, the process of creating this artwork allows him to identify a place where he could store time, memory, and existence to manifest the warm and emotional patchwork that make up his personal history.