"Chen Zhen, 45, Whose Artwork Explored Complexities of China," By Holland Cotter, Dec. 24, 2000, Obituary, The New York Times

Chen Zhen, a Chinese-born conceptual artist and sculptor who lived in Paris and became a highly visible international art figure during the 1990's, culminating with an appearance at the 1999 Venice Biennale,* died on Dec. 13 in Paris. He was 45.

The cause was cancer, reported Mr. Chen's New York gallery, Deitch Projects in SoHo.

Mr. Chen was born in 1955 in Shanghai to a family of physicians. The family was sent to the countryside for ''re-education'' during the height of the Cultural Revolution.

In 1973, he graduated from the Shanghai Fine Arts and Crafts School, and in 1978, he graduated from the Shanghai Drama Institute, where he specialized in stage design.

Eager to work in the context of international art, he left for Paris in 1986. Without any contacts there or any knowledge of French, he supported himself for three years as a sidewalk portrait artist. He enrolled in the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts* where he later became a visiting artist.

A solo show in 1990 in Paris was followed by more than 30 others during the next decade in Europe, the United States and Asia. He first appeared in New York in a group show at the Asian-American Arts Center in Chinatown in 1991, then in a solo show organized by Alice Yang at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in SoHo in 1994.

His debut at Deitch Projects in 1996 focused on a multimedia sculpture titled 'Daily Incantations.''The work was based on revered ancient Chinese forms: sets of bronze bells associated with ancestor-cult rituals and a ruling elite. In his piece, however, the bells were replaced by wooden chamber pots, utilitarian objects already obsolete in modern China. In the center was a satellite-like globe made of old television sets, computers and radios, from which came recorded voices reading from Mao's Little Red Book'.

Like all of his work, 'Daily Incantations' blended critical and nostalgic views of China's past and present, and made references to Western culture and a global economy. It won a prize at the Kwangju Biennale in South Korea in 1997, and was included in the Carnegie International 1999/2000 in Pittsburgh.

A survey of Mr. Chen's work was organized by the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Italy, last spring. He was working on a public sculpture for the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris at the time of his death.

His work was included in several international exhibitions, and he had a second Deitch Projects exhibition this year.

Mr. Chen is survived by his wife, Xu Min, and a son, Chen Bo, both of Paris; his mother, Xu Manyin, his father, Chen Jialun, and a brother, Chen Zhu, all of Shanghai; and a sister, Jian Chen Bristol, of Vancouver, British Columbia.

* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com. Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx.