Roy XR Chen: Wild Walls

The works on view at "Wild Walls", Roy XR Chen's solo exhibition at HOW+SPACE, are selected from his "G Series". The series intends to cast more light on what behind the graffiti through the passing of time rather than merely the content of the graffiti itself. When he creates the works, Chen's role constantly swifts between a graffiti artist, an observer and a recorder. His works delicately depict the rich layers of graffiti: the top layer of fresh paint, the base layer showing decadent walls, and the sediments left over by the washing of time in the middle layer. The whole series conveys the message that human creation, be it graffiti or industrial productions, can never withstand the power of nature and time for good. In Roy XR Chen's paintings, we see modern cities eroded by nature, and buildings slowly deteriorating as if they had life in them. Old graffiti on the walls are covered and replaced by new ones over and over, leaving human traces in abandoned cities all the more distinct.

Roy XR Chen is deeply intrigued by the interplay between the sense of incompletion and dilapidation of ancient murals caused by the force of nature and traces of human intervention. His works depict scenes of post-human civilization. There are streets, walls and toilets, all with human traces, but not a single human figure. In these scenes, graffiti is the only non-industrial mark left by human beings. Viewers become both the observers of and pedestrians on these streets. Roy XR Chen sees graffiti as a modern form of mural painting that has emerged since the last century. With the development of industry and urban construction, graffiti start to be seen on surfaces other than walls, for instance, toilets, vehicles, garbage cans and skateparks. In ancient times, to make recordings was a main purpose of mural. Nowadays quite likewise, graffiti has also turned out to become a medium to witness and record the ongoing urban and community cultures. The graffiti and surfaces where they are presented collectively define the "Wild Walls".

In the eyes of some observers, graffiti continues the purpose of murals as a public art form. Great graffiti works as not only decoration but also a voice for people from certain communities. However, the question whether this kind of works is an innovative art form or a public nuisance has always remained controversial. In the discussion of the use of public space, graffiti artists are often regarded as intruders of urban public space. But at the same time, people give consent to displaying something more offensive in public places: advertisements. Ads always tells us that we are not good enough, not pretty enough, not wealthy enough. Although graffiti can be aesthetically immature in some aspects, at its best, it can be the opening of a communal space: a commentary, a conversation, a concept captured in an image on a wall. Real street art holds up a mirror to the world so that we can see the absurdity of it. It shows us who we really are, both good and bad, as a community. Street art has an amazing ability to do this because it exists in our real and everyday world, not vacuum-sealed and shuffled away in a privileged private space. Its very public nature makes street art unique and powerful.


Touring around the "Wild Walls", viewers would easily notice that there is a large number of works under the theme of toilets. What makes toilet graffiti special, and worthy of its own entire category, is the uniqueness of the space in which people are painting or writing. There's a tension to doing private activities in a public space, with only the flimsiest of boundaries hiding and displaying some of our culture's biggest taboos. Toilet graffiti also offers an interesting contrast to the way people typically behave in the bathroom. The unspoken rules of keeping to oneself, not making eye contact, and avoiding talking to strangers, all contribute to a sometimes-tense environment with the goal of shifting focus away from what's actually happening behind stall doors. But the graffiti on the stall doors does not ignore it one bit. It crudely acknowledges and pokes fun at what we all go to the bathroom to do, and flouts the politeness surrounding it as well. These "aggressive" graffiti enter spaces that should not have been entered, and now these spaces are moved into the art museum. The exhibition "Wild Walls" have also become a carrier of graffiti. Together with the paintings in the exhibition, they record the time and space of these graffiti, or the dynamic superposition of several different spaces and times, generating an moment of uncertainty.