Time to Say Goodbye is the second solo exhibition in Shanghai by Chinese-American artist Daniel Chen. The new series of paintings, created between 2023 and 2025, emerges as an intimate response to the loss of his father and reflects on the theme of farewell. Chen uses painting as a means of emotional processing, employing techniques of accumulation, scraping, and reuse of pictorial material. The dense, layered surfaces of his works evoke the passage of time and the process of inner transformation. Pieces such as Thorns, developed over four distinct phases across five years, and the diptychs Wedding Party and Twin Tornados narrate parallel stories, recalling the experimental approaches of artists like Cy Twombly and David Salle. The portrait Chen Zhijian, dedicated to his father, stands as the emotional core of the exhibition. The title itself, Time to Say Goodbye, recalls the song beloved by his father and highlights the journey of farewell and memory that runs through the entire show. The work U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services broadens the personal narrative into a wider reflection on identity, migration, and cultural belonging.
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