Today we’d like to introduce you to Decheng Cui.
Hi Decheng, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was born in China and lived in China until I came to SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) to complete my MFA program in the Painting Department.
Both my parents were entrepreneurs. They haven’t been on a college campus, but they’re great in their field. However, when I was growing up, the lack of education advice and information from my parents had a big impact on me. This is also the direct reason that made me step by step towards art.
My first exposure to painting was when I was eight years old. At that time in China, there was a wave of exams because high-level exam certificates could add extra points in future high school and college entrance exams. I can still clearly remember how boring art exams were. Basically, I kept drawing a picture that the teacher had changed and then went to the exam room to paint it again. However, when I got a junior certificate at the age of eight, the adding points policy was dropped. After that, my family had no motivation to continue to encourage me to paint, and I lost interest.
My second exposure to painting was when I was in the third grade of middle school. I have dyslexia since I was a child, but in my childhood China, no one knew about dyslexia, I only learned about it after going to the eye doctor three years ago. So written exams that require a lot of reading are painful and bad for me. My English grades were particularly poor because, in my eyes, a test paper full of densely written English was a stack of symbols that could hardly be read. To make up for my poor English grades, I chose to go to an art high school and take the art college exam in the future. However, I didn’t know at that time that China’s art college examination has a single subject required a line in English. That is to say, in order to avoid the English test, I chose a road that must be good in English.
The reason why I decided to pursue art now is the experience of studying in the Art History and Art Criticism class taught by Yi Ying after my undergraduate degree. This course is my first systematic and detailed understanding of contemporary art. It was also the first time I woke up to the importance of content to art. Since then, I have fallen deeply in love with creating conceptual art. Because I can fulfill my sense of mission and stay away from the fear of death from creation. I have been a person who is very afraid of death since I was a child. I can clearly remember that one day when I was in elementary school, I imagined the feeling of no feeling after death when I was eating, and I was frightened and vomited. Since then, I have often lost sleep because of the fear of death.
The creation of conceptual art is a kind of self-salvation for me. Since the demise of the flesh is inevitable, then I can only find ways to plant the fragments of my soul among human civilizations, to root it to console myself. Therefore, it is unimportant to me that what kind of art language I use, and it plays a whole key role in my work that what kind of my concept, my soul, in it.
These are the origins of the identity as an artist, and what follows is the story of the entrepreneurial identity as a gallerist. During the five years of living in the United States, as a Chinese conceptual artist, I can feel the restrictions on Chinese-American artists in the conceptual art market at every moment. I am lucky because my type of work is easier to sell and there are galleries willing to work with me. But galleries and collectors buy my work always because of the decorative qualities of my work, not because of the concept in my work. The conceptual art market in the United States is not very friendly to Chinese-American conceptual artists and artworks that cannot be hung on the wall. In the current United States, especially in California, there are a large number of first-generation and 1.5-generation Chinese immigrants. They are in great need of art services in their mother tongue and artworks related to them. I want to help the younger generation of Chinese conceptual artists and 1st &1.5th generation Chinese immigrants, that’s my purpose and motivation as a gallery.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road is very rough. I have encountered many vicious collaboration experiences along the way. I have encountered such experiences as galleries not fulfilling their contracts, galleries embezzling my works for sale, and other artists embezzling my results. There are also a lot of struggles that happened on most people like me who are new to the US, such as without family, without friends, it is difficult to get social help, and also the threat of some racial discrimination.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a professional conceptual artist and I’m working on my future gallery. The work I am currently working on is a four chapters series, metaphysical series. This four chapters are Sensibility & Rationality, Critique of Sensibility, Critique of Pure Reason, Human’s Limitation. The works in this series carry my understanding of the world. The first two parts of the solo exhibition have been done so far.
The type of my work is never limited by the material, my artworks are not only traditional painting, sculpture, and printmaking but also animation, glass blowing, metal work, paper making, fiber weaving, sound creating and so on. In my opinion, the material of artistic creation is just a language that serves the content. I will first determine what I want to convey, then I will find the most suitable material, and finally create a work of art.
This is my artist website, welcome to visit it: www.cuidecheng.com
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Risk is cost. Everyone faces risks all the time, which is why we buy a lot of insurance. Risk is an indeterminate cost, not something to be feared or a challenging opportunity to inspire.
The biggest risk I face right now is starting a business, a gallery.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cuidecheng.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/decheng.cui/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009357485317
