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Xuan Chen is a young artist whose eclecticism is impressive. She paints using acrylic and oil, creates installations and drawings, and even shapes abstract sculptures with the visual acuity of a more experienced craftsperson. Some of her work is rooted in a social conscience (animal cruelty and feminism), but Chen does not limit herself to critiques of society, the way an agitprop artist might channel all their energies to shed light on the horrific genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, or level accusing fingers at the trucking industry, whose glider trucks emit diesel particulate matter into the atmosphere. We can deduce this by her portrait of a chemistry teacher whose charisma she found hypnotic, and the imaginative conception of a corner of New York City in her art brut style drawing. Nor does she refrain from swimming in the blue territory of the unconscious, evident in the imaginative flair she displays in a drawing, Oops, I Swallowed a Watermelon Seed, that humorously tracks the fugitive journey of a watermelon seed as it passes through the intercontinental byways of the human body. What's especially pleasurable about Chen's work is that the viewer has no problem detecting the sheer amount of joy the artist has taken in her creations.

Just look at the skill in Chen's possession in her portrait of the chemistry teacher in Pondering. Painted with acrylic on kraft paper, this loving homage gives us an instructor who exudes a Promethean majesty. His handsome, distinguished visage bears the crags and valleys scored by a hard-won wisdom. The noble nose, crinkled at the bridge, casts quizzically into the future, much like a scientist who seeks to pluck at the heart of mystery. A fine-boned hand cradles the spray of zinc beard jutting from his chin, each digit beautifully balanced, as if measured true with a carpenter's spirit-level. The straight-ahead gaze informs us that this is a man secure in his knowledge, which springs from sturdy shoulders clothed in bituminous blue-black, represented by conical and florence flasks that sprout a flowering of molecules. This figure, who dominates the picture in classical poise, could be imagined amid the soft strains of Chopin's Preludes as he calmly elucidates the elementary principles, before his passion for science takes sway and both Chopin's music and his teaching voice burst into a simultaneous pyrotechnics.

Puppy Mill, a 31 inch tall abstract sculpture, bears all the hallmarks of a medieval torture machine. Inspired by news of the horrid treatment of twenty runts sourced from a puppy mill, this found-object assemblage appears dangerous to the touch, yet seemingly has referents in art history. If the collection of triangle shards crowning the piece were to spiral and leaf outward, this could have easily been a call-back to Alexander Calder; if the crown rotated like helicopter blades, with the accompanying putt-putt-putt sounds, we might have had a reference to the whimsicality of a sculpture by Jean Tinguely. But what we are given is a singular appendix of danger and pain shaped by a wounded conscience.

The exaggerated portraiture of the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in her twenty-seven year tenure was an explosive advocate for gender equality and progressive causes, speaks powerfully to her outsize role in contemporary American life. Perhaps harking back to the iconic work of the Colombian artist Fernando Botero, whose corpulent figures (what the art critic Roberta Smith referred to as "pneumatic inflatables") were sometimes symbolic of either their gargantuan vitality or bloated self-conception, Chen's Ginsburg is an expansive image one might find gracing the cover of The New Yorker magazine. Ginsburg's famous jabot ringing her neck (seemingly the white crochet collar she had purchased in Cape Town, South Africa--the frontrunner among all her collars), so expressive of her femininity in a male-dominated court, furls across her body like the branches of a Douglas fir tree. Her undersized head (which speaks to the body politic--though the head makes the ruling decisions, it is the great body that incurs the consequences and is thus given paramount importance) is held at a curious angle, as if the weight of consideration concerning a crucial issue gives her great pause.

Chen's colorful drawing done in an art brut style, A Corner of NYC, is a bluff treatment of the cacophonous metropolis. We are shown a busy staging area where the world as seen through the eyes of the artist is unstable, raw, and visually enticing. Crammed with figures, emotionally jazzy, there is movement that is channeled among all the bends and twists of the perpetually torqued city, a veritable dynamo of energy that never ceases to move, even as the rest of the world stands still. Reminiscent of Jean Dubuffet, this is work that is not done with carelessness, but instead dances with a careless grace.

It is exciting to see an artist who takes chances with subject matter and style. After all, experimentation is as essential to the artist's practice as it is in the scientist's laboratory. What will come next from this artist who is still at the beginning of her long artistic journey? What responses will she have to our complicated and wonderful world? The extraordinary Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett was once asked, "Why do you write?" His response: "Well, I feel that like a snail, I want to leave my trace of slime as I leave this world." Leave it to Beckett to provide such a memorable yet humble image of his devastating art. But I think he captures succinctly the secret wish the artist nurtures in their heart: to leave their mark before the great broom of dissolution sweeps them away into eternity. I suspect that Xuan Chen will leave her mark long before that.

Xuan Chen is a second-year Illustration major at the School of Visual Arts. Xuan primarily works with acrylic painting and experiments with three-dimensional and digital work. She expresses her love of animals and nature in her art, including social commentary against animal cruelty. Besides painting, Xuan enjoys hiking with her dog Remi.

Edwin Rivera is a playwright and Writing & Literature instructor at the School of Visual Arts. He is also the editor of "The Match Factory."