CHERYL CHEN
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
work
about
Cheryl Chen Pin Hui was born in Singapore in 1983. Cheryl developed a passion for fine art and furniture at a very young age. Her parents had a gallery in Singapore, at the old Mandarin Hotel along Orchard Road and a furniture shop on the ground floor of Stamford House. These two places were her playground and that was where she had the opportunity to learn about art and interior design. As a child, Cheryl was absolutely obsessed with altering the furniture layout in her room, often waking up in the middle of the night to move things around. The love for balance and cohesion in design has evolved into a passion for creating and expressing herself through art.
Cheryl graduated with a Bachelor with Honors in Interior Architecture from the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Whilst living in Sydney, she discovered a new love for the arts and design and was hooked on making architectural models and small pieces of artwork. It was her way of "being expressive and having fun while being terribly meticulous". In 2010, an unplanned trip to Tokyo changed her life. She watched quietly for minutes as millions of white feathers floated in a completely white space. It was Tokujin Yoshioka's "Snow" installation. The sound, the lack of colour, the space, the textures - it truly blew her mind. When she moved back to Singapore, she wanted to do so much more.
Admitting to being somewhat of a control freak and slightly ocd, Cheryl loves working with numbers - counting keeps her in check. The number 8 is often included, just because "for the Chinese, 8 is a lucky number". Obsessed with straight lines and three dimensional linear shapes, her canvases are filled with strong textural strokes and depth. She simply refuses to use a paintbrush, and instead paints with pen knives and industrial metal rulers. Her works are often meticulously measured and plotted out in Autocad before they reach the canvas. Beauty is in the detail(s). She has a “mild” habit of collecting personal artifacts for future pieces of artwork that she hasn't even begun to think about.
Cheryl has been working as an Interior Architect for more than 18 years, the last 10, as principal and design director of her own practice, Idenburg & Chen Interior Architecture - ICIA Pte Ltd. Together with her husband Pieter Idenburg, they have designed and renovated more than a hundred residences in Singapore.
Today, Cheryl lives in the Netherlands with her husband and two children. The artwork that is featured in her catalogue has been produced and sold in London, Sydney, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and the Netherlands. While continuing to work as an Interior Architect and produce new artwork, Cheryl is living the dream of traveling and soaking up the world through her unusual perspective.
