陈文令是新一代中国当代艺术家的重要代表之一。他经过近一年的缜密思考和精心准备最终在798卓越艺术空间向观众呈现了一个令人惊叹的个展《紧急出口》。展览分别在大小两个厅展出两件大小雕塑作品：《你看到的未必是真实的》和《如何逃离》。同时，还配以一些草图和一部纪录片。与以往展览模式颇为不同的是，他此次个展的关注点更多聚焦于观念和现实，而所开辟的新的雕塑-装置的展示方式是其观念转变的关键。
陈文令的个展《紧急出口》是一个令人浮想联翩的哲理性命题，蕴含了“观念-社会-日常”的双重意义：一方面本意是指安全逃生之意。一方面引申是指社会公共安全之意。然而，观众看到的是没有安全之路可逃。它使观众对主题的猜想与展览的结果之间产生了某种强烈的心理错位。
在这两件最新作品中，陈文令主动解构了以往的艺术思维模式，将文学性、戏剧化、大众媒体等要素的转入自身的雕塑语言。尽管陈文令保持以往某些充满力量和动感的夸张手法，但他还是在创作的整体思路上进行了大胆的调整。首先是他在观念、语言和形式上以“超真性”（Hyper-Reality）来塑造一种鲜明的个性化风格，以摆脱了那种由民俗性、波普性、艳俗性符号所认定的话语模式。其次是他的政治经济学观点的转变，关注国际性的经济政治问题——把全球金融危机的个案作为视觉文化的分析对象，即选择了华尔街上竖立的著名“金牛”雕塑和“庞氏”金融骗子麦道夫作为创作对象。
在作品《你看到的未必是真实的》中，麦道夫被一个放着爆炸式的屁的牛顶在墙的中央，戏谑性地再现了麦道夫处于走投无路的窘迫、无奈、痛苦之状，引人注目的是那种腾云驾雾的充满动感和力量感的“牛屁”，不仅暗喻了人过度贪婪“吹牛”的结局，而且象征了国际金融中心虚拟泡沫的危险。在这样一个市侩社会中，金钱被人虚拟了很多假象，而假象也迷惑许多人。麦道夫只是艺术家选择的一个对象，作品“你看到的未必是真实的”被进一步解读为“人忽视了真正的事实和真相”，这是一个非常具有观念性的社会批判性的寓意。艺术家通过对这一代表性人物的讽喻，明确发出了对当代资本社会无保留驱动人的欲望的追问，也就是对撇开道德、信誉、信仰后的那种以猜疑、欺诈、暗算、骗局、阴谋为手段的掠夺和剥削的追问。
与之前作品相比，陈文令的新作趋于观念的批判性。这是一种建立在真实与超真性、现实（主义）与超现实（主义）、日常与超日常关系之上的新语言，他紧紧抓住了把运动置于思想之中的理念，并在观念和形式上对经典雕塑进行了大胆的改变，从而创造出了一种新的雕塑-装置语言形态。
实际上，陈文令的艺术与其说是生动而形象地再现了人和资本之间的复杂搏弈关系，倒不如说是分析和揭示了视觉表征背后令人沉思的道德危机、信誉危机和信仰危机。这才是陈文令艺术观念的真正本质。他用清晰而生动的视觉语言向为观众提供了一种新的观看方式和一种独特的理解方式。
Chen Wenlin: Where is The "Emergency Exit"?
Curator: Huang Du
Chen Wenlin is an important Chinese contemporary artist of new generation. After one year's careful thinking and preparation, he presented an amazing exhibition "Emergency Exit" in Zhuoyue Art Space. The exhibition displayed two sculptures separately in two exhibition halls. The name of the two works are "What You See is not Necessarily True"and "How to Escape". At the same time, the exhibition also included a number of drafts and a documentary. Compared with his former exhibitions, this one focused more on the concept and the reality. The sculpture - installation demonstration is the key of changing concept.
"Emergency Exit" is a matter of imagination in philosophical proposition, contains a double meaning of "concept and daily life". On the one hand, the original intention was refers to escapes safely. On the other hand, it was refers to the social public security. However, the visitors saw that there was no safe way to escape, which caused the visitors have some kind of intense psychological dislocation between the subject suspicion and the display result.
In these two latest works, Chen Wenlin deconstructed his former art thinking mode on his own initiative. He put the literariness, dramatization, mass media, and other elements into his sculpture language. Although Chen still kept the energy and dynamism in his works, he has made some bold adjustments on the whole creation process.
First, he used "Hyper-Reality" in his art concept, art language, and art form to shape a distinctive personal style, to get rid of the marks which are from the folk, pop, and gaudy symbols. Second was the transformation of his political economy viewpoint. He concerned international economic and political issues and put the global financial crisis as an object of visual culture to analyze. Therefore, he has chosen the famous Wall Street "Golden Bull" sculpture and "Ponzi" financial swindler Madoff as the object of the art work.
In the work of "What You See is not Necessarily True", Madoff was being pushed on the center of the wall by a bull pushed by a detonation-like fart. The work displayed the shape of helpless and desperation of Madoff. The "the bull fart" was really noticeable, which looks like clouds and full of sense of excitement and power. It was not only a metaphor for the over of excessive greed, but also a symbol of the danger of bubble in the international financial center. In such a philistine society, people used money to make virtual illusion, and the illusion also confused many people. Madoff was just a selected object by the artist. "What You See is not Necessarily True" could be further interpreted as "the ignored reality and truth by people", which was the social criticism implication of this work.
Through the parable of this representative character, the artist questioned people's non-retention desire in the capital society. He also questioned that people ignored the characteristics of moral, ethic, and credibility. Many people just tried to plunder and exploit others by fraud, cheat, and conspiracy.
Compared with his previous work, Chen's new works tend to make more art critical concept. This is a new language based on true and hyper-reality, reality (ism) and super-reality (ism), and daily and super-daily. He firmly grasped the ideas of putting motion into the spirit, and made bold changes in concept and form of classical sculpture, thus created one kind of new sculpture - installation language.
In fact, Chen Wenlin's art was not so much about vividly presentation of the complex relationship between human and capital; his art is more about the analysis and revelation of moral crisis and faith crisis behind the visual representation. This is the true nature of Chen Wenlin's artistic concept. He used a clear and vivid visual language to provide the audiences with a new viewing mode and a unique way to understand it.