Reading series No. 200702

Chen Linggang is a Beijing-based artist who was born in 1978 in Jilin Province, China, and graduated in 2000 from the Environmental Art Department (similar to Landscape Architecture) of the Jilin Forestry University (now Beihua University). Although he never formally studied painting, he began painting during his spare time while working at contemporary art magazines after college. Eventually he decided to focus on art, and in 2008 began creating the form that has become his artistic trademark – grid-like collages of knotted and compressed paper. His textured compositions on canvas play with our understandings of heritage, language, and reading, adding a tactile dimension to the written word by using paper as the primary medium for his contemporary works.