Focus on.. "New Gate" by Chen Wei

Born in 1980 in Zhejiang province, Chen Wei comes from a rural and once impoverished region that has since become the ‘backbone’ of China due to its key role in the country’s economic development. A striking symbol of this transformation is Hengdian Studios, a sprawling cinematic city where filming takes place year-round. In these vast spaces, different eras intertwine—full-scale replicas of imperial palaces, luxury hotels, and attractions that recreate natural disasters coexist in an uncanny blend of reality and artifice. While the artist does not explicitly cite these sets, built in the 1990s, as a direct inspiration for New Gate, the work could be seen as a fragment escaping from this world where reality is divided.

New Gate (2020) is part of "New Life", the most recent chapter in Chen Wei’s long-term project "New City", initiated in 2013. Evoking scenes and objects familiar to the inhabitants of megacities, each work in this series could be likened to a short story in literature. Nocturnal vignettes, interior scenes, or urban visions piece together the emotions shaping contemporary China: the collective aspiration for success, the disillusionment of consumerism, and the vertigo induced by the rapid erasure of the past.

A peculiar sense of nostalgia emanates from the spaces the artist reconstructs in his studio—vanished nightclubs, neighbourhoods undergoing relentless transformation. Constantly shifting between illusion and memory, these places belong as much to fiction as to Chen’s personal recollections, shaped by his emergence in Shanghai’s underground music scene in the 2000s. Yet, nostalgia and illusion do not signify a rejection of the present; rather, they weave into the narrative of contemporary life, where the new deteriorates almost as soon as it appears.

Chen Wei’s recent solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum was titled “Make Me Illusory”, a reference and counterpoint to the nighttime plea of the young boy in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), who longed to become real.

Does this New Gate, suggested by the title of the work, exist elsewhere? A tree’s shadow stretches across the entrance of a building bathed in warm light, its steps leading up to a brick wall. This small stage could be read as both a metaphor and a mundane reality: in the rush of continuous urban development, absurdities arise that may never be corrected.

This street corner could belong to a district in Shanghai, left empty during the Covid-19 pandemic, just as it could be a deserted nighttime passage through Hengdian Studios. The artist’s masterful handling of light blurs the distinction between night and day. New Gate might promise a transition to a new life, or, more simply, a quiet exchange between two strangers talking until dawn. In this silent setting, soon to be occupied by others, their aspirations and hasty missteps—driven by the urgency to move forward—become part of the ongoing narrative of a sentimental education, shaped and undone by the city itself. ◼