“I've always been fascinated by spinning things ever since I was a child. My fast heartbeat tells me how much I enjoy watching spinning things. I am crazy about scary and mysterious stuff like rotating gears, clocks, and owls. They have been very important concepts in my creative life.”
-Chloe Chen
Chloe Chen is a 17-year-old Chinese artist whose illustrations and style are captivating the fashion world. Chen has an aesthetic duality, which is dark and surreal on one side, and full of childlike curiosity and wonder on the other. It is the ideal combination for expressing the anxieties faced on the human journey through adolescence. As a result, top brands such as Balenciaga, Issey Miyake, and Moleskine have taken note and have collaborated with Chen on various projects.
In Chloe Chen’s artwork, you will often find spirals, gears, swirls of smoke and rotating mechanisms. These elements can be both aesthetically pleasing and unsettling at the same time. When things spin does that mean they are working, or does that mean that they are spiraling out of control? When everything rotates around a center point, does that give that point power or does it force that point to continue to dance round and round? For a young woman going through the trials of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, it is understandable that these shapes and symbols can represent a variety of things, not all of them comfortable.
In a recent illustration called “Passed Too Fast,” Chen depicts a young woman with large owl-like eyes, much like her own. The girl looks straight at the viewer with a sad, lost expression. The left side of the girl’s head crumbles apart, spilling out a beautifully rendered array of gears and spirals threaded together by sinewy cords and ropes that resemble nooses. Even her hair begins to swirl into spirals. These gears and spirals fill the background and form an organic pattern, like red blood cells floating through our veins. Some of the spiral shapes transform into breasts, while some of the gears become clocks. A young woman’s adolescent years fly away from her as she is left holding a simple ball in her right hand. She stands there frozen with anxiety and wonders what will become of her after it has all tumbled away.
Chen shared her feelings about the passage of time with her peers in her own way. On the other hand, this painting also expresses a common sentiment that many people find difficult to put into words. It's no wonder that this painting is so well-loved on Instagram.
More info: Instagram
Passed Too Fast
Nightmare
Nowhere
Collabloration between Chloe Chen and Issey Miyake
Chloe Chen
