EXHIBITED:
Next Station Cartoon?, Star Gallery, Beijing, April 1-12, 2005; He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, June 2005

ILLUSTRATED:
Next Station Cartoon?, China Water & Power Press, Beijing, 2005, color illustrated, p. 28

Though not especially keen on comic strips and cartoons, Chen Ke, an artist who came into her own on the heels of the 1970s, first embarked on her career with a focus on a comics and animation style, and she was even praised as the spokeswoman of the Chinese “Cartoon Generation.” Cartoon characters or personified images are the main subjects in most of her early works. The bright and brilliant tones divulge her delicate feminine emotions. Her works often express in a strong narrative style.

Executed in 2003, The Family of Button is a fine piece from the collection of her early work. Buttons with various shapes and colors spread out over the square canvas. A red thread runs throughout the piece, connecting each button and drawing the attention of the viewer to the distant upper part of the painting. In following the movement of the depth of field, the buttons become denser and become interlaced. The white gourd shape in the background resembles a woman’s figure and the tangled buttons seem to allude to fine clothes. Several buttons in the foreground appear to have personified manners in which the red thread running through the eyes of the buttons alludes to bloody tears streaming down. The blue button in the middle with a needle hung through and dripping blood speaks clearly and adds a trace of sorrow to the bright colorful painting. The title, The Family of Button, along with the amorphous female figure in the background call to mind the character Nora, who runs away in A Doll’s House by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Johan Ibsen. Perhaps, behind that veil of independence, a sense of difficulty and sadness still lurks, unbeknownst to us all.