Nevermind the Botox: In Search of Lost Time, or, Youth Regained

 

EMPTY STAGES: The Before Or After Of Rock n’ Roll

 

 

In Jimmy Chen’s paintings of empty stages, the implication of time—the moment imbedded in a narrative—is unclear. Has the band played and left? Or are they about to appear? These questions are evoked by the uncanny absence of the musicians. The chronological sensitivity is borrowed from Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, which have inspired art historians for centuries to argue whether the girl, in looking at you, is about to turn her head away, or has just turned towards you. Thus, the girl’s gaze invariably ripples into the past (or) future, the preceding (or) succeeding rays of time, respectively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy Chen

Here We Are Now (2006)

These paintings may also sentimentalize (which despite contemporary art discourse is not such an awful thing) a time during our youth when the music we listened to defined who we were. It was a way for us to exist outside of what our parents had fostered for us, which by definition usually precluded all things enjoyable. There is a certain sadness in knowing that bands will never mean as mush as they did. Here We Are Now is a familiar ring to the generation reluctantly spear-headed by Kurt Cobain in Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Jimmy Chen

What The Last Kid Said (2006)

Johannes Vermeer

Girl With a Pearl Earring (1665)

If only Vermeer knew that, centuries later, some genius would drop by and change the lives of so many self-loathing kids, and legitimize their ingrown feelings, he might have more cause to explain his painting of the girl with a pearl earring a little better. After Cobain’s departure, Vermeer could say, “The girls is looking at you, and will never turn away.”