Welcome to Chono
Welcome to the creative home of the Danish Copenhagen-based artist Chono Hegelund. At chono.com you can experience the artwork of Chono in many forms, such as paintings, drawings, music, poetry, and much more. If you are interested in knowing more about the Danish artists Chono, you can learn more about the artist Chono by visiting the Who is Chono page.
Who is Chono?
Chono Hegelund (born July 8, 1975) is a Danish artist most associated with the Neo-Expressionist movement. His work reacts against Conceptual art by returning to figurative ideas and techniques from the past. His work is influenced by contemporary cultures, most strongly that of parental emotional neglect and abuse in the 21 first century.
The artwork of Chono
Chono’s paintings are mostly painted on either linen, canvas or wood, using a broad array of paint, ranging from oil paint from Schmincke, Oil Sticks from Sennelier or acrylic painting from Golden.
The artwork of Chono is usually passive-aggressive in a rough and violently emotional way
Chono’s paintings are, for the most part, a mix between neo-expressionism, figurative art, and late modernist or early-postmodern and transavantgarde. The visual artwork of Chono is usually passive-aggressive in a rough and violently emotional way, often using vivid colors. Chono’s inspiration comes from a combination of childhood emotional experiences and everyday observations in the life of humans. His art is a reaction against emotional blindness and conceptual art.
Chono – on as a person and as an artist
Chono isn’t a fan of interviews, and on the rare occasions he gives one, the responses are often brief—even cryptic. Despite this, the painter’s words reveal a glimpse into the artist’s inspirations and processes. They offer a window into the approach, in which Chono remixes references from art history, the streets of the 1980s and 1990’s suburb of Copenhagen (Avedøre Stationsby) and the tumult of jazz and sub-pop culture with his identity as a young, rootless boy.
When asked where the poetic smattering of words scrawled on his canvases comes from, Chono says: “When I’m painting or making music, I feel them, and I will just throw them down, right there and then.”
The everyday observations on the streets are Chono’s classroom
Although the work of Chono is spontaneous and vibrant, his work is also profoundly thoughtful—the products of observing the world and the people around him. When asked how he depicts these observations onto his artwork, Chono says: “I don’t think about art while I work, I try to think about life, how not to obey the orders of the mind on structure and balance.”
Education through observations
While Chono never received a formal art education, he is a student of art, culture impressionism, established as well as street art, from a young age. Growing up in Avedøre Stationsby in a family- and community of artists and political activists, he would on a daily base be part of the Copenhagen art scene and political movements and protests. As he grew older, Chono didn’t take well to traditional education, moving from school to school, from public schools to boarding schools, until finally dropping out in his senior year of High School. Instead, he preferred to observe and experience life: “I never went to art school, I just look at a lot of things, and that’s how I learn about art and life in general, by looking at it.”
Over time, Chono became increasingly captivated with the work of the old masters like Caravaggio and Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. Although incorporating elements of their compositions and techniques into his style, Chono still has a unique style of expressing emotions, and through his drawings and paintings.
