Cheng Haiyan's solo exhibition "Dreamscape" at the Zhejiang Art Museum

The exhibition traces the more than four-decade artistic journey of , throughout which "dreams" have remained the central thread of her practice. Structured around the narrative sequence Entering Dreams — Recording Dreams —   Carving Dreams —   Constructing Dreams —   Dwelling in Dreams, the exhibition systematically presents the artist's evolution from artistic awakening and the formation of her distinctive visual language to a mature stage in which art and life merge into a shared mode of existence. Initiated by Zhejiang Art Museum and jointly curated by Cai Chengzhi, Yang Yijun, and Huang Qi, the exhibition surveys Chen Haiyan's years of study beginning in the 1980s, the long process of experimentation that followed her appointment as a faculty member, and the artistic language she ultimately forged, extending further to the intimate narratives that have emerged over the past decade through her shared life and creative practice with her son.

Entering Dreams

Born in 1955 in Fushun, Liaoning Province, Chen Haiyan spent her childhood in the rural outskirts of Yingkou. Life in the countryside nurtured her acute sensibility and planted the unadorned emotional foundations that would later permeate her artistic practice. She began studying painting at the age of nine and entered the Printmaking Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) in 1980, remaining there as a faculty member after graduation.

During her student years, Chen focused primarily on copperplate printmaking. These early works testify to a period of accumulation and exploration: rigorous exercises in technique as well as tentative probes into an emerging inner vision. It was during this formative period, in a moment of absent-minded reverie during an English class, that Chen unexpectedly encountered the stirring threshold of the subconscious.

Recording Dreams

Since the 1980s, Chen Haiyan has continuously documented her dreams through writing and sketching, a practice she has never interrupted. Every morning upon waking, she immediately records the dreams of the previous night in her notebooks. Fleeting scenes and emotions are preserved through poetic language and rapid drawings. These dream journals gradually evolved into an immense reservoir of artistic material, as well as a medium through which she contemplates both the world and the self.

In 1986, Chen began translating her dreams into images through carving knives and brushwork. Transforming motifs from her dream notebooks into highly personal artistic compositions, she gradually developed a distinctive visual language through sustained and repetitive labor. Dreams thus became a new point of departure for her artistic practice.

Carving Dreams

Following the turn of the millennium, the technical core of Chen Haiyan's practice shifted toward excavating emotional and sensory resources from lived experience. She sought to move beyond the constraints of rigorous academic training and allow her works to grow organically from within. Maintaining an almost declarative tone, she began inscribing into her dream imagery the delicate fragments of daily life, strange inner visions, and subtle emotional tremors.

At the same time, her exploration of materials expanded in multiple directions, while the formal language of her works dispersed and proliferated with increasing freedom. Within these works, dreams function as an intermediary realm, delicately mediating between the dreamer and reality itself. Through a restrained mode of expression, the dreamer achieves an extraordinary expansion of emotional intensity, with every feeling held precisely at the threshold of recognizability.

Standing before these works, we become readers of dreams. Chen's dreams establish connections with us, the viewers, transmitting fragments and details through which we reconstruct a figure charged with emotional tension and psychological complexity.

Constructing Dreams

As the engraved line and painted gesture gradually expanded into monumental hanging scrolls, Chen Haiyan's dream imagery broke free from the confines of the woodblock and grew toward a boundless spiritual landscape. Using the earth as her working table and her own body as a measure, she carved and painted barefoot upon large sheets of basswood and xuan paper, as though cultivating the ground itself.

Each brushstroke and each incision embodies not only intense physical labor, but also a profound process of spiritual refinement. Through years of relentless work and astonishing productivity, Chen unfolds the density of lived experience itself. This sustained commitment forms the emotional core of her practice and represents her most devoted means of conversing with dreams.

The resonance of woodcut carving and the fluid vitality of ink painting merge into one. Time loses its measurable scale within the traces of ink and knife, while entire inner landscapes descend directly onto the surface. What emerges is not merely an expansion of physical scale or a breakthrough of medium, but a complete release of bodily sensation, psychic murmuring, and dream consciousness. At this stage, Chen is no longer simply a recorder or translator of dreams, but a creator of dreams herself, constructing through monumental works a visionary realm in which viewers may dwell, wander, and be profoundly moved.

Dwelling in Dreams

This section consists of two parts: Garden of Dreams and Place of Dreams. Together, they form the environment that Chen Haiyan built after retiring from the academy alongside her son, the artist .

Since retirement, Chen's engagement with gardening has expanded dramatically. Attached to an iron archway in the garden is a slogan given to her by her son: Gardening is My Passion. The notions of “cultivating” and “nurturing” permeate nearly all of her activities —   whether tending plants, making art, or inhabiting with conviction the intertwined roles of mother and teacher.

Passing through the Garden of Dreams and entering the Place of Dreams, visitors encounter what Chen and Gu Renming call their “House of Curiosities.” Every guest who enters this extraordinary space is struck by the sense of wonder and curiosity provoked by its contents. The rooms are filled with natural specimens and handmade objects gathered from around the world. Though ordinary in themselves, these objects are arranged by the artists into endlessly compelling constellations, each carrying stories that seem inexhaustible.

Finally, Gu Renming's Mother Series and Sun Chengcheng's documentary Dream offer further intimate perspectives on Chen Haiyan's life and practice, providing viewers with a more nuanced and closely observed portrait of the artist.