Li Chen

Li Chen or Li Zhen is a sculptor.

He was born in 1963 in Yunlin County, Taiwan.

Li attended Taichung Municipal Dajia Senior High School.

Before joining Taiwan's mandatory military service, Li took up a position in the workshop of local sculptor Hsieh Tung-liang where he studied body sculpture.

Two of Li's early art series The Beauty of Emptiness and Energy of Emptiness use simple minimalist lines that create an aesthetic of emptiness to reinterpreted the image of Buddha statues.

In the Spiritual Journey Through the Great Ether series, Li is less limited by tradition, inventing a technique that incorporates gold and silver leaf on the exterior of his bronze sculptures.

Soul Guardians was inspired by Li's reflections on the occurrence of natural disasters over almost a decade.

He takes the main character of a myth as his creative focus as he discusses the significance of "God" for humanity.

This was followed by The Beacon: When Night Light Glimmers series, which took a "special light" as its creative core.

More recently, Li has reflected on human nature in his creative works: the Ordinary People series in 2010 demonstrates his spiritual contemplation.

The 2011 series Immortality of Fate, which is one of Li's "virtual" series, utilizes wood, rope and ceramic clay to convey his awareness of the changeability of cause and effect in life.

In the same year, Li also produced the Ethereal Cloud series, the first time he showed cast stainless steel pieces.

Li's auction record is HKD.11,190,000 for a sculpture "Dragon-Riding Buddha" created in 2001, set at China Guardian, Hong Kong, on 7 October 2019.