Expression, Gaze, and Psychological States
Hans Belting argues that the emotion we experience when looking at a face is more important than the expression we perceive upon it. When viewing Chen Han’s portraits, the viewer enters a similar state of empathy. Through his artistic insight and humanistic inquiry, Chen probes the realities that lie beneath the surface of the face, bringing the inner emotional states of his subjects into the pictorial space and allowing viewers to experience an emotional resonance through sustained contemplation.
Blurred and indistinct portraits frequently appear in Chen Han’s work. Like a film director, he draws on fragments of reality as points of reference, orchestrating the figures, spaces, and emotions within the composition. In his latest works, Chen amplifies facial expressions, gazes, and body language, capturing moments of hesitation, silence, and absent-mindedness. These figures feel strikingly real and familiar, yet remain elusive and ambiguous. Like the “decisive moment” in photography, their images seem to suspend time at a point of uncertainty, revealing another kind of truth concealed within the inner lives of his subjects.
Masks, Reality and Illusion, and Blue Veins
Alexander Tinei’s early paintings were deeply influenced by his Eastern European artistic training, and his work has often been interpreted through the political context of the Soviet era. Following a radical stylistic transformation, Tinei moved from collage-based techniques toward portraits of both fictional and real individuals, gradually establishing a distinctive visual language.
In this exhibition, Tinei has scaled back the fragmented, improvisational collage techniques that characterized his earlier works. What remains constant is the ambiguity of identity in his portraits, along with the signature blue veins that slowly extend across the picture surface. Like masks, these faces blur the boundary between the physical body and its outward appearance, becoming vessels through which the conditions of contemporary existence are reflected. Invisible masks follow us like shadows; the authentic face and the persona fashioned through disguise and performance often become so indistinct that they are difficult to tell apart. Through these portraits, the loneliness and melancholy that lie beneath the surface of Tinei’s work are projected onto the viewer.
Unrecognizable Faces and Figures Seen from Behind
In contrast to the many frontal faces in Alexander Tinei’s paintings, which invite the gaze of others or become masks through which the self is constructed, Gideon Rubin’s portraits focus on figures seen from behind and faces left blank. By withholding all recognizable facial features, Rubin creates a form of retreat: an act of self-protection, an inward withdrawal, and an intentional space of absence within the image.
Rubin’s grandfather, Reuven Rubin, was a renowned Israeli artist. The constraints of an identity overshadowed by his grandfather’s reputation prompted Gideon Rubin to leave his homeland. This departure was also a physical act of withdrawal, enabling him to break free from the profound psychological burden of belonging to a family with a strong artistic legacy.Rubin immerses himself in the interwoven histories of the past and in old photographs of anonymous figures, dismantling the predetermined narratives embedded in archival photographs. Through details such as clothing, hairstyles, and gestures, he constructs new narratives around minimalist depictions of figures seen from behind or faces rendered blank.
The face is both a distinctive marker of individual identity and a surface that can conceal the truth. Chen Han, Tinei, and Rubin approach portraiture from three different perspectives: the exploration of inner psychological states, the metaphor of the mask, and the disappearance of facial features. None of the three artists seeks to reproduce a clearly defined social group. Instead, through blurred identities, deliberate omissions, and undercurrents of emotion, they seek to touch upon the shared dimensions of memory, history, and human nature.
Faces fade in Running Water invites reflection through painting: when the face no longer serves to define a person’s identity, the image becomes an open field capable of holding the emotional currents of both the collective and the individual. It becomes a space in which these otherwise elusive experiences can be seen and acknowledged, awaiting each viewer’s own perceptions and sensibilities to enter and bring them to life.
About the Artists
Chen Han was born in Shenyang, China, in 1973. He graduated from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang and currently lives and works in Beijing. His works are held in collections including Shanghai Modern Media Group, DSL Collection in Paris, France, and the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Australia.
Alexander Tinei was born in Moldova in 1967. He studied at the Repin National Academy of Fine Arts in Chișinău and currently lives and works in Budapest, Hungary. His work has been exhibited internationally on numerous occasions and featured in major exhibitions, including documenta in Regensburg, Germany (2004), the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Shumen, Bulgaria (2006), and the 5th Prague Biennale (2011). His works are held in institutional collections including Saatchi Gallery in London, Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation in the United States, and SØR Rusche Sammlung Oelde in Berlin, Germany.
Gideon Rubin was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1973. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. He currently lives and works in London. His work has been exhibited and collected by prominent art institutions and collections around the world, including Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel, Freud Museum in London, Rubin Museum in Tel Aviv, FLAG Art Foundation in New York, Mackintosh Museum in Glasgow, Voorlinden Museum in The Hague, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco, Zabludowicz Collection in London, and Francis Foundation in France.
