Author: Anna Ponomarenko
About contemporary artist Stacey Chen
Date: Dec 14, 2024
@FB: stacey.chen.90 | staceychen.com
Article
Stacey Chen’s Curated Spontaneity offers a refreshing exploration of beauty, encouraging viewers to uncover the hidden marvels within the mundane. This project challenges conventional notions of art and design by transforming discarded objects—often overlooked or dismissed—into meticulously crafted sculptures. Through her exploration of balance, movement, and negative space, Chen’s work invites a reconsideration of the unseen potential in everyday materials.
Drawing on her industrial design background, Chen reinterprets ordinary objects with precision and creativity. Her process centers on the concept of “static movement,” a paradoxical interplay between stillness and dynamism that draws the viewer’s attention. This duality reflects Chen’s ability to combine intuitive experimentation with structured design principles, blending spontaneity with meticulous craftsmanship. Materials such as food packaging, straws, scrap plastic, and discarded kitchenware are selected not for their aesthetic appeal but for their inherent shapes and utility. By examining spatial relationships and visual hierarchies, Chen creates sculptures that appear to defy gravity, exuding a sense of harmony and intrigue.
Chen’s creative journey begins in chaos—a pile of seemingly insignificant materials that, through her artistic vision, are transformed into dynamic visual statements. In one striking example, a milk carton, coiled wires, and wooden dowels come together in a structure that seems to lean into motion, as if frozen mid-transformation. These objects are not simply placed but arranged with an innate sensitivity to their shapes, weights, and the empty spaces they frame. Chen often incorporates cardboard and bristol board into her creative process, not only to stabilize her experiments but to distill her ideas to their essence. In this iterative process, unplanned configurations frequently emerge, revealing surprising forms and spatial relationships that Chen instinctively refines. Casting these works in plaster ensures their permanence, turning fleeting moments of inspiration into enduring expressions of balance and form.
Spontaneity is at the heart of Chen’s practice, weaving a sense of organic vitality into her otherwise structured approach. While she approaches her materials with a deliberate intention, it is the unexpected juxtapositions and serendipitous discoveries that breathe life into her compositions. In one captured moment of her process, a curved white strip hovers precariously over a wooden base, its shadow stretching beneath it like a reflection in water. Another image reveals a cluster of disparate objects—crumpled plastic, rigid cardboard, and delicate straws—balanced in a way that feels both improbable and inevitable.
At the heart of Curated Spontaneity is Yin-Yang, a sculpture that exemplifies Chen’s mastery of spatial relationships within a constrained 10-cubic-inch volume. This piece captures the delicate equilibrium between opposites: light and shadow, motion and stillness, presence and absence. Chen’s use of curved surfaces and interlocking shapes creates an engaging tension, urging viewers to consider how voids and forms influence our perception of the physical world. In its compact and deliberate form, Yin-Yang is not just a study of balance—it is a profound meditation on how oppositions define and complement one another, a concept that resonates far beyond its physical dimensions.
Through Curated Spontaneity, Chen challenges conventional perceptions of value and beauty in everyday objects. By elevating discarded materials to the realm of fine art, she not only redefines artistic boundaries but also encourages reflection on sustainability and creative reuse. Her work resonates in today’s world, where environmental concerns demand innovative approaches to consumption and waste. Chen’s sculptures offer a compelling vision of how overlooked objects can inspire aesthetic and conceptual innovation.
Chen’s industrial design expertise allows her to bridge the gap between art and design, creating works that are both visually compelling and intellectually stimulating. Her sculptures provoke thought about fundamental principles such as composition, spatial dynamics, and balance. Curated Spontaneity transcends object-making, inviting viewers to engage with form and space on a deeper level. Chen’s vision affirms that creativity knows no bounds and that even the simplest materials, when approached with curiosity and care, can transform into timeless expressions of wonder.