Jenova Chen Quotes

The best artists know what to leave out.

It's not what you play but what you leave out that makes the difference.

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

Everything man is doing in architecture is to try to go against nature. Of course we have to understand nature to know how far we have to go against nature. The secret, I think, of the future is not doing too much. All architects have the tendency to do too much.

For me, music is in the choice of what not to play as much as in what you've chosen to play.

In the West, we look at art through life. Well, that's one way of living. In the Orient they look at life through art. They even drink their tea without sugar, for the same reason that they don't like a lot of frilly decorations on a painting. I can't stand butter on my bread for the same reason. I'm allergic to goo and rococo.

I'm often guilty of overcooking and too much arrangement and throwing too much at it. But I think as I get older, I'm learning better when to be empty and when to be full.

By appreciating the darkness when you design the light, you create much more interesting environments that truly enhance our lives.

It must be a balance in everything we do, not too much of everything, keep it simple, not complicated.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

In a minimal interior, what you don't do is as important as what you do.

In Japanese art, space assumed a dominant role and its position was strengthened by Zen concepts.

My palate is simpler than it used to be. A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that's important.

I don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.

There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!

Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

I have no fondness for pure form at all.

The problem of architecture has always been the same throughout time. Its authentic quality is reached through its proportions, and the proportions cost nothing. In fact, most of them are proportions among things, not the things themselves. Art is almost always a question of proportions.

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

Too much clutter is a disturbance to the energy of a space for me. It's big no-no for me.

I think complexity is beautiful.

It's amazing to me how often the answer to making something sound better is to play something less.

Sometimes I think albums are so ambitious, they don't stand as bodies of work because you try to achieve so much, and sometimes we need to do less. Say less.