Born 1971 in Nantou, Taiwan Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan

Since 1997, Chen has experimented with the use of industrial materials in his work, such as thumbtacks. For the “Mosquito Nail Shan Shui” series, Chen carefully emulates landscape paintings found at the National Palace Museum, Taipei and abroad, by placing diminutive mosquito nails on canvas. After precise calculations, for his first completed piece, Early Spring for the Mosquito Nail (2010), Chen used a specially designed nail gun to place as many as 400,000 stainless steel mosquito nails on canvas. Enlarging the original Early Spring (1072), he then carefully replaced the ink of the scroll with the mosquito nails, which protrude about one centimeter from the canvas. Each nail punctures the surface of the canvas, at the same time conjuring a three-dimensionality that accentuates the work’s otherworldliness.