Rearranged #2

Something about this reminds me of a photograph from the 80s or 90s. The colors have a flash quality. Very cool.

Tumbling blocks of color cascade down the surface of Yuan Chen’s Rearranged #2. The present work is defined by a controlled chaos that speaks to the organization's individuality. As someone who struggles with organizing my possessions, living space, and tasks, I relate to Chen’s desire to artistically capture the seemingly endless process of arranging and rearranging our lives and abodes.

In many ways, art is the process of finding order. Art does not need to be neatly arranged, but it needs to be balanced. From hard-edged geometric abstraction to loose, expressive, and gestural abstraction, the artist must establish compositional harmony, or all the forms will collapse into a muddy mess.

 Organization may seem quotidian, but it is one of the most foundational aspects of art and life. Those of us who have succumbed to disorder know too well that life tends to spiral rapidly out of control. Without a structure, our ambitions and duties fall into chaotic confusion. All systems should be malleable and subject to change. Otherwise, we would produce very boring art and lead very dull lives. Creativity is born of change, and we should never lock ourselves in a prison of inflexibility. However, an existence bereft of structure is equally detrimental to creativity and growth. Without order, we might start ten projects but never finish any of them, and the more accustomed we become to disorder, the harder it becomes to return to a productive routine. We must often remove ourselves from the places and triggers that have defined our descent into the unplanned to find a system and rhythm again. Rearranged #2’s captures this difficult but necessary process.