by Noor Chadha

Shanghai born artist Chen Zhen's self interview, Chen Zhen has an
intimate and soul-revealing dialogue his alter-ego Zhu Xian who's name
is actually the two characters that form Chen Zhen's first name. In
the dialogue Zhu Xian interviews Chen Zhen with very personal
questions relating to both life and art, digging deep into Chen Zhen's
psyche. Employing several references to both his artworks, his time in
France, Chinese culture and idioms from both Western and Eastern
cultures, and life experiences, Chen Zhen coins a new term,
"Transexperiences", both an artistic and life-based concept, which he
feels is the most profound type of experience one can have in life. In
fact, transexperience is the only path to true understanding and
comprehension of what life and art is about. What are transexperiences
exactly? It is a type of "spiritual running-away" where you yourself
seek loneliness and throw yourself into a completely new context, be
it a different culture or country or a different lifestyle or creative
process. He feels that in this special state of mind, when "the soul
has left it's shelter" is the only time that one can create their best
work. Through experiences and accumulating these transexperiences,
constant change and unchange, the possibility that anything can happen
at any time, he experiences "cultural homelessness" which enables him
to enter bursts of extreme creativity.