Curated by Marta Papini

Opening 6 June, h 18.00

On June 6, 2026, Casa Masaccio | Centre for Contemporary Art presents Imitation of Life (Imitare la vita), the first solo exhibition at an Italian public institution by Taiwanese artist Skyler Chen. Curated by Marta Papini and organised in collaboration with the gallery MASSIMODECARLO, the exhibition unsettles the traditions of Western painting through fractured forms and narrative fragments.

For the exhibition at Casa Masaccio, Skyler Chen engages with the canons of Italian Renaissance painting in the very place where they took shape: linear perspective, the realism of proportion, the idea of an ordered and measurable space built around a single viewpoint. Adopting this same perspectival framework, the artist introduces unsettling elements – inscriptions, incongruous details, enlargements – that fracture the harmony of the scenes.

At first glance classical and steeped in reference to fifteenth-century art history, the images turn threatening and electric, like a leaden sky pressing down before a storm. This charge comes from a question the work refuses to let go of: what happens when the single viewpoint at the heart of linear perspective is cut through by a plurality of subjects and histories – when the universal subject of modernity is displaced by multiple, queer, and diasporic identities, marked by the very History that perspective helped to narrate?

The works born from these questions offer no answers. They appear instead as fragments of a larger narrative, freeze-frames from a story with no knowable beginning or end – a riddle to which no solution seems within reach.

Skyler Chen was born in 1982 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and lives and works in Rotterdam.

Chen’s paintings blend classicism and modernity, creating intimate and quietly provocative scenes that move between traditional Taiwanese iconography and American commercial imagery. His compositions are populated by enigmatic figures in familiar settings – surrounded by erotic magazines, dumplings, fresh fruit, birds – each object carrying a symbolic weight that speaks to memory, desire, and identity. Growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia, Chen found in painting a way to communicate with the world; the canvas became both a means of expression and a space for healing.

At the heart of his practice is an exploration of queer Asian identity – what it means to exist as a queer person within a conservative culture, and how that experience shapes the way one sees and is seen. His figures are detached and still, deeply contemporary yet somehow timeless, conveying one of the defining feelings of our moment: aloneness.

Chen’s work is held in significant public collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; X Museum, Beijing; the George Economou Collection, Athens; the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Florida; and the Forbes Collection, New York. In 2025 he was included in the 14th edition of the Taipei Biennial, held at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Marta Papini is an independent curator. She is the curator of Radis, a four-year public art project promoted by the Fondazione ArteCRT. In 2025 she curated the exhibition Fata Morgana with Massimiliano Gioni and Daniel Birnbaum, organized by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Palazzo Morando, Milan. She is the associate curator of Dimanche Sans Fin, at Centre Pompidou-Metz (2025).

In 2024 she was co-curator of The Parliament of Marmots, 9th edition of the Biennale Gherdëina (2024) and of Thinking like a Mountain (2024-2026), with Lorenzo Giusti. In 2023 she was a member of the selection committee for the Future Generation Art Prize.

She was the artistic organizer of The Milk of Dreams, 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani (2022). She has curated, co-curated and organized several exhibitions, including Lonely Are All Bridges. Birgit Jürgenssen and Cinzia Ruggeri at Fondazione ICA, Milan (2025) and Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna (2021); Il mondo magico, Italian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017, curated by Cecilia Alemani); The Artist is Present, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018, with Maurizio Cattelan).

Press kit: bit.ly/4naVuOs

Casa Masaccio | centro per l’arte contemporanea
Monday: closed
Tuesday – Friday: 15-19
Saturday, Sunday and Holidays: 10-13; 15-19
Free entrance

Free guided tours
every Sunday afternoon at h 17.30

advance booking recommended
055 9126168 | 055 9126283 | casamasaccio@comunesgv.it

Casa Masaccio | centro per l’arte contemporanea
Corso Italia, 83 – 52027 San Giovanni Valdarno (AR)
Tel. 055 9126283 – casamasaccio@comunesgv.it