"Art creation is like an exploration of life, while painting a tiger is a silent dialogue with the tiger."
Inspired by his famous artwork "Stay Hungry", Chen Yingjie Vans' capsule design is connected with his interpretation of the tiger spirit - exploration, adventure and perseverance.
With the "Stay Hungry" series as the design origin, Chen Yingjie combined urban streets with natural elements, showcasing through the splashed ink, oracle bone inscriptions and modern city street signs over Vans' classic silhouettes.
“The tiger symbolizes exploration, adventure and perseverance.This is also in line with the spiritual core of street culture. It goes out of the box and explores the unknown.”
Through the deconstruction and reorganization of traditional and modern elements, the artist expresses a new visual language belonging to the Chinese Year of the Tiger, as well as an interpretation of the power of natural life, and injects street art with traditional cultural symbols to build a bridge between street art, traditional culture and natural forces.
The Vans x HUATUNAN Year of the Tiger collection covers Vans' iconic silhouettes including the Authentic, the Sk8-Hi and the Old Skool. The Authentic carries signature street ink graphics with transparent outsole to present the vivid style of tiger; The Sk8-Hi Echo DX reinterprets the classic Sk8-Hi with more details added to the silhouette, presenting a living tiger in the wildlife.
The Old Skool applies black suede over the shoe upper, matching with the pattern hand drawn by Chen Yingjie.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: CHEN YINGJIE
Born in 1991 in Guangdong, China, now lives and works in Shunde (Foshan, Guangdong Province). In addition to on-canvas, the artist also devotes himself to large-scale mural painting, live performance and space device. Through different media, he has been exploring how to combine traditional Chinese ink painting with Western street art graffiti and striving to find a balance between the two contradictory and antagonistic cultures. He would like to break away from cultural constraints and create his own artistic language. He was named one of ‘25 Contemporary Chinese Artists You Need to Know’ by Complex magazine, and selected for Forbes 2020 - 30 Under 30 List.
For more information and where to purchase, please visit The Drop List, a calendar of Vans’ most exclusive product drops.
