Sichen Grace Chen (SG) – Artist Biography
Sichen Grace Chen is a painter who lives and works on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the Matsqui, Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo First Nations, also known as Langley Township. Her work explores aquatic ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest, examining the relationships between human, more-than-human, and technological bodies through saturated colour, texture, and layering. Her works have been exhibited in galleries and public spaces throughout the Lower Mainland, BC, and in various cities across the US.
Shaped by early experiences growing up in Chengdu, China, and moving between cities in British Columbia, Canada, Chen’s practice reflects an ongoing attentiveness to the colourful nuances, rhythms, and atmospheres of both natural and synthetic environments. She is the co-founder and creative director of Atelier Aloera, a climate-focused creative organization that supports projects fostering ecological connection and community.
She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and is pursuing her MFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU). She is the co-founder and creative director of Atelier Aloera.
陈思辰 Sichen Grace Chen (SG) – 艺术家简介
陈思辰是一位画家，她生活和工作在马茨奎（Matsqui）、夸特伦（Kwantlen）、卡特兹（Katzie）和塞米亚穆（Semiahmoo）原住民的传统领地，这片土地也被称为加拿大卑诗省兰里镇（Langley Township）。她的作品探索太平洋西北地区的水生生态系统，通过饱和的色彩、纹理和层次感，审视人类、非人类以及科技之间的关系。她的作品曾在卑诗省低陆平原的画廊和公共空间以及美国多个城市展出。
陈思辰的成长经历，包括在中国成都的早期生活以及在加拿大卑诗省不同城市的迁徙，都对她自然和人造环境中的色彩细微差别、节奏和氛围产生了深远的影响。她是Atelier Aloera的联合创始人兼创意总监，Atelier Aloera是一家专注于气候的创意机构，致力于支持促进生态联结和社区建设的项目。
她拥有罗德岛设计学院 (RISD) 的艺术学士学位，目前正在温哥华艾米丽卡尔艺术与设计大学 (ECU) 攻读艺术硕士学位。她是 Atelier Aloera 的联合创始人兼创意总监。
Sichen Grace Chen – 2026 Artist Statement
I am pulled towards using vibrant and warm colours to evoke my emotional connection to the marine ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. I use thin glazes paired with impasto brushstrokes to achieve a sense of visual depth and fluidity, like looking into a deep well, thus subverting traditional notions of landscape painting. This aquatic thinking is informed by my fieldwork in intertidal zones in BC.
During the Summer of 2025, I visited Botanical Beach, located on the Northern coast of Vancouver Island, for the first time. I returned home with over one hundred photographs, many of which documented bundles of bull kelp, like that observed in the exhibited piece, Holding the Current. In another piece, A Million Currents, kelp is painted a saturated red, reminiscent of oxygenated blood, which is contrasted with bright cobalt and deep purples to portray the reflection of the sky and depths of the water. This constant flow between contrasting colours allows me to stimulate the eyes, providing an intense and immersive viewing experience.
In this series, some paintings directly reference moments of Botanical Beach, whereas others translate my field notes into a language of colours, textures, and gestures I use in the studio. I invite viewers to swim along the current with me, embracing water as more-than-blue, embodied, and the tissue between us all.
– Sichen Grace Chen 2026
思辰 Sichen Grace Chen – 2026 艺术家陈述
我倾向于使用充满活力和温暖的色彩来唤起我对太平洋西北地区海洋生态系统的情感联系。我运用薄涂和厚涂相结合的笔触，营造出视觉上的深度和流动性，如同凝视一口深井，从而颠覆了传统的风景画概念。这种对水的思考源于我在加拿大卑诗省潮间带的实地考察。
2025年夏天，我第一次造访了位于温哥华岛北岸的植物海滩。我带回了一百多张照片，其中许多记录了成捆的巨藻，正如我在展出的作品《紧握水流》中所描绘的那样。在另一幅作品《百万流水》中，巨藻被涂成饱和的红色，令人联想起含氧的血液，并与明亮的钴蓝色和深紫色形成对比，描绘出天空和深海的倒影。这种对比鲜明的色彩之间的持续流动，使我能够刺激观者的视觉，带来强烈而沉浸式的观赏体验。
在这个系列中，一些作品直接取材于植物园海滩的景象，而另一些则将我的田野笔记转化为我在工作室中使用的色彩、纹理和笔触的语言。我邀请观者与我一同顺流而下，拥抱水——它不仅仅是蓝色，它更是一种具象化的存在，是我们彼此之间的纽带。 – 陈思辰 2026
Sichen Grace Chen – Artist Statement
2025 Amphibious: A Return to Self and Place
“My work explores the interconnectivity and sentimentality of human, more-than-human, and technological landscapes and entities, weaving together micro and macro ecologies as sites of liminality, memory, and emotional resonance. By merging different ecologies with similar patterns, new understandings of bodies, ecosystems, and relationships emerge.
Through additive and subtractive methods of painting, such as dry-brushing, glazing, and wiping with rags, I instill a sense of deep time and ephemerality. I begin with underpaintings in watercolour, introducing randomness and microbial and dreamlike patterns. Afterward, I paint using oils and acrylics to enhance the movement of the water, producing compositions that feel fluid and suspended in time and space. Pareidolia, a phenomenon in which the mind perceives meaningful patterns or images in random stimuli, is one way I untangle truth and present my unconscious memories in their most authentic forms. Through the act of painting, I process personal histories and interpersonal relationships, weaving together fragmented objects and spaces that speak to alchemy, mending, and rupture. My paintings capture the complex and symbiotic interplay between artist, material, and studio, paralleling the mechanisms of an ecosystem and serving as a respite from solastalgia— the grief one feels when one’s home environment is lost.
I draw upon Julie Mehretu’s multi-layered artworks that explore cartography, readability of the image, and sociopolitical issues through visual abstraction. Inka Essenhigh’s saturated paintings evoke animism through her transformation of landscapes into hybridized beings, inspiring my paintings that suggest the solution to the climate crisis is more-than-human and multifaceted.
By embracing ambiguity in scale and sense of place, I challenge viewers to recognize the patterns within nature, and themselves, and reconsider their relationship to the organic and mechanical ecologies that sustain us.”
– Sichen Grace Chen 2025
思辰 Sichen Grace Chen – 艺术家陈述
2025【双栖：自我与空间的回归】
我的作品探索人类、超人类以及科技景观与实体之间的互联互通与感性，将微观和宏观生态交织在一起，作为阈限性、记忆和情感共鸣的场所。我通过将不同的生态与相似的模式融合，对身体、生态系统和人际关系产生了新的理解。
我通过加减法的绘画方法，例如干刷、上釉和用抹布擦拭，我注入了一种深邃的时间感和短暂性。我先用水彩打底，引入随机性、微生物和梦幻般的图案。之后，我使用油彩和丙烯颜料来增强水的流动感，创作出流畅、悬浮于时空的构图。空想性错视 (Pareidolia) 是一种大脑在随机刺激中感知到有意义的图案或图像的现象，这是我解开真相并以最真实的形式呈现潜意识记忆的一种方式。通过绘画，我处理个人历史和人际关系，将碎片化的物体和空间编织在一起。这些作品探讨着炼金术、修补和断裂等方式。我的画作捕捉了艺术家、材料和工作室之间复杂而共生的相互作用，与生态系统的机制相呼应，也成为人们在失去家园时所感受到的乡愁——一种慰藉的喘息。
我借鉴了朱莉·梅赫雷图（Julie Mehretu）的多层次艺术作品，这些作品通过视觉抽象探索制图学、图像的可读性和社会政治问题。因卡·埃森海伊（Inka Essenhigh）饱和的绘画通过将风景转化为混合生物，唤起了万物有灵论，这启发了我的绘画创作，这些绘画表明气候危机的解决方案是超越人类的，是多方面的。
通过拥抱尺度和地点感的模糊性，我挑战观者去认识自然和自身内在的模式，并重新思考它们与维持我们生存的有机和机械生态系统之间的关系。
– Sichen Grace Chen 2025
Sichen Grace Chen – CV
AMPHIBIOUS
A Return to Self and Place – Paintings by Sichen Grace Chen
Opening July 5th, 2025, 2-4pm
https://openingsg.eventbrite.ca
Artist Talk: July 9th, 2025, 6-8pm
Exhibition: July 5 – 30, 2025
Mon-Fri 10am-5pm or by appointment here.
Lipont Gallery is excited to present AMPHIBIOUS – A Return to Self and Place, a solo exhibition featuring the works of Langley and Vancouver-based artist Sichen Grace Chen, also known as “SG”. Chen explores the interconnectedness of human, more-than-human, and technological realms, focusing on spaces of memory and emotional resonance.
Chen’s early years were marked by constant movement between different places such as Chengdu, China, British Columbia, and Rhode Island, where she lived and studied. This was her initial experience of self–fluid, adapting, and constantly re-forming. Currently, she lives in Langley, and her artistic practice, studies, and creations are deeply rooted in Vancouver. Here, her body, mind, and spirit are re-converging, creating a sense of wholeness, a true return to self within a defined time and space. This “coming home to herself,” this return to essence, resonates deeply with Chen’s paintings.
Like her abstract, fiery forms resembling complex organisms or a nebula, pulsating with vibrant orange and red hues against a monochromatic background, her journey has been one of intense energy and organic growth. The interwoven strands and tendrils in her work mirror the tangled network of experiences that have shaped her own return, creating a sense of movement. The vastness evoked in her paintings, like outer space or a deep ocean, reflects the immensity of the inner, emotional and cerebral landscape she has traversed.
This sense of return extends beyond the personal. She thinks of water and its inherent fluidity and its fundamental connection to all life. Our species, intrinsically linked to every other life form, cannot survive in isolation. This realization underscores the profound interconnectedness of all things, a constant flow, much like water, that binds us to creatures beyond the human and the very essence of our shared existence. Chen’s luminous, star-shaped forms and swirling, celestial-like formations, suggestive of dynamic energy, capture this sense of mystery and wonder. Even the simple wooden bench, house, garden plants, and grassy landscape in some of her paintings, symbolizing a comfortable and domestic life, speak to the universal longing for belonging and connection.
The exhibition will be on view at Lipont Gallery from July 5 to July 24, 2025, with a public opening reception on Saturday July 5th, from 2-4 PM. An artist talk will take place on Wednesday July 9th, from 6-8 PM, offering audiences an opportunity to meet the artist and delve into her creative processes.
Exhibition Details
Dates: July 5 – 30, 2025
Hours: Mon – Fri 10am-5pm or by appointment
Address: Lipont Place, Room 218 (no elevator), 4211 No. 3 Road, Richmond, BC, V6X 2C3
Admission: Free
Parking: Free on the south side of the building only.
Transit: Aberdeen Station
双栖 – 自我与空间的回归
陈思辰绘画展
开幕：2025年7月5日星期六 下午2:00 – 4:00时
https://openingsg.eventbrite.ca
艺术家讲座：2025年7月9日星期三晚6:00 – 8:00时
展览日期：2025年7月5日至30日
展览时间：周一至五10:00 – 5:00免费开放，或点此预约。
温哥华力邦美术馆 (Lipont Gallery) 荣幸举办现居加拿大兰里及温哥华的艺术家陈思辰(Sichen Grace Chen，艺名“SG”) 的个人绘画作品展【双栖 – 自我与空间的回归: 陈思辰绘画展】(AMPHIBIOUS – A Return to Self and Place – Paintings by Sichen Grace Chen)。陈探索人类、超人类以及科技领域之间的互联互通，聚焦于记忆与情感共鸣的空间。
陈早年辗转于中国成都、加拿大卑诗省以及她生活和学习的美国罗德岛州等地。这开启了她对自我迁徙、适应环境和不断重塑的最初体验。目前，她居住在加拿大兰里。她的艺术实践、学习和创作都深深扎根于加拿大温哥华地区。在这里，她的身心重新交融，创造出一种新的完整，在特定的时空里真正地回归自我。这种回归自我、回归本质的体验，与陈思辰的绘画作品产生了深刻的共鸣。
正如她作品中的抽象的、如同火焰般形态的复杂生物体或星云，在单色背景上跃动着鲜艳的橙色和红色，她的旅程充满了强烈的能量和有机的生长。交织的线条和卷须，映射着塑造她自身回归的错综复杂的人生经历的网络，营造出动感。她画作中唤起的浩瀚，如同外太空或深海，反映了她所探索的内在、情感和思维景观的无垠。
这种回归感超越了个人层面。她同时也思考水及其固有的流动性，以及水与所有生命的根本联系。我们人类与其他所有生命形式都息息相关，无法孤立地生存。这种认识强调了万物之间深刻的相互联系，一种如同水一样的恒常流动，将我们与人类以外的生物以及我们共同存在的本质联系在一起。她作品中闪耀的星星和旋转的天体，暗示着动态的能量，并捕捉到了神秘与奇妙的力量。即使是她一些画作中象征着舒适居家生活的简朴长椅、房屋、花园植物和草地，也表达了人们对归属感和联系的普遍渴望。
展览将于 2025 年7 月5至 30 日在加拿大力邦美术馆展出。开幕活动将于 7月 5日星期六下午 2:00时至 4:00 时举行，艺术家讲座将于 7月 9 日星期三晚6:00时至8:00时进行，为观众提供与艺术家见面并了解其创作过程的机会。
展览日期：2025年7月5日至30日
展览时间：周一至五10:00 – 5:00免费开放，或点此预约。
地址：Lipont Place, Rm218 (无电梯), 4211 No. 3 Road Richmond BC
楼南免费停车。请勿停楼北。
