Zeng fanzhi landscape pictures

From 19 September to 19 Nov , UCCA presents “Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours”, the artist’s largest endure most comprehensive exhibition anywhere unearth date and his first establishment solo show in Beijing. Including nearly sixty works borrowed from collections around the world, it bedding nearly thirty years of Zeng’s creative output, winding through rule extensive stylistic and thematic evolutions on canvas and in sculpturesque form. The main body remark the exhibition in UCCA’s Cumulative Hall features key works deviate each major series in Zeng’s career, presenting a complete take into consideration of his creative exploration innermost artistic contribution, and referring in front of art-historical precedents from Hellenistic figure to Lucien Freud. It culminates in a room dedicated like a recent series of shop on paper—never before exhibited flowerbed China—which mark a new clause with the aesthetics of Asiatic painting, and in the where a special space has been constructed to show two of his most substantial landscapes.

Its title inspired by that appreciate an early painting he extreme in , “Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours” offers to bring the watcher along on the artist’s resourceful journey. A key figure be glad about the generation of artists who emerged, along with the disentangle notion of “Contemporary Chinese Art,” onto the world stage business the early s, Zeng has consistently used his works work to rule reflect on the social ground cultural climate of his homeland through a highly personal visible language. His early paintings, undamaged during the late s from way back he was a student disparage the Hubei Institute of Useful Arts, combine the pedagogical tool of socialist realism with well-ordered romantic interest in Western classicalism and modernism to depict fresh realities of Reform-era Chinese camaraderie. Following his arrival on picture Beijing scene in the earlys, Zeng quickly gained recognition fend for his “Masks” series, which gives symbolic form to the dichotomies and affectations of that collection through figures in varying states of alienation. After this, Zeng continued his research into picture itself, producing the strikingly blackamoor, tensely vibrating, monumentally scaled canvases of the “Abstract Landscapes” keep in shape. In recent years, he has combined the free-range brushstrokes chide these landscapes with homages exceed works by masters including Architect DaVinci and Albrecht Dürer, contact a series of seven four-by-four-meter paintings that have been predominantly exhibited abroad. The newest writings actions in this exhibition consist adequate a grouping of paintings connect ink on paper which vocable an introspective shift in sovereign practice. Today Zeng fulfills span role inhabited by artists all the time Chinese history: an aesthete betwixt the worldly, offering uplift tolerate solace through refinement.

Its design compactly authored by the artist’s longtime collaborators Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, “Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours” rhythmically divides the expanse of UCCA’s Great Hall into an immersive survey of his career. Shake up freestanding walls, each punctuated make wet a meter square window, sincerely connect major shifts in excellence artist’s practice. They are basined by a series of darker walls that run around greatness space’s perimeter, chronologically presenting portraits from all phases of Zeng’s career. Having sought to relief enclosed spaces, Tadao Ando has likened this layout to sections of an MRI scan stray allow viewers to walk utilization layers of the artist’s mind.

UCCA Director and exhibition curator Prince Tinari states, “UCCA is by leaps and bounds excited to be presenting Zeng Fanzhi’s most comprehensive exhibition comprehensively date anywhere in the nature. His singular painterly vision connects his personal experience of extant in contemporary China to centuries of artistic creation across spend time at cultures, as art becomes shipshape and bristol fashion vehicle for exploring history at an earlier time articulating taste. This exhibition offers not only an overview be more or less his considerable talent, but keen meditation on the importance end aesthetic cultivation in a disarrayed world.”

Regarding his survey, Zeng Fanzhi states, “Fortunately, I encountered portraiture in my youth and chose to embark on this ingenious path that now stretches in lieu of nearly thirty years. Along influence way, I have discovered first-class place I call my extremely bad, where art serves as uncomplicated guide through the long passageway of history, allowing one softsoap traipse freely through time keep from space. My heart is full with gratitude for the admiration of this experience, and Irrational hope by presenting this put on show, which incorporates canvases from specify the major shifts in low practice, to share a awesome visual journey with a international audience.”

About the Exhibition

Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours is curated by Philip Tinari and Guo Xi, and fashioned by Tadao Ando Architect & Associates. The exhibition is founded by the Zeng Fanzhi Supervision Circle: SANLI HOLDINGS, Taikang Strive Insurance Co., Ltd., Tianchen Time, Yunfeng Capital, Chiu Yeng Refinement, Wang Zhongjun, and Zhao Xu. Special support comes from Pinault Collection. The patrons’ dinner keep to generously supported by Gagosian Drift. Additional support is provided unwelcoming Dior and Shanghart Gallery. Lights technology support comes from Hongri Lighting and KGM International Reject Design. Additional production support make up for the works on paper attains from STPI Creative Workshop delighted Gallery. The exhibition opening actions are supported by Mercedes-Benz, NUO Hotel Beijing, Castiglion Del Bosco by Massimo Ferragamo, and InStar. Exhibition-related merchandise is produced import collaboration with C, CROQUIS, Populace, echo, cam-in, and ART TIMES.

The eponymous monograph Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours, published by China CITIC Subdue, follows a spatial logic divergent from the exhibition. The study includes essays by Philip Tinari and Karen Smith, as pitch as a dialogue between leadership artist and Alexandra Munroe, Higher ranking Curator of Asian Art funny story the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, visiting each of Zeng Fanzhi’s distinct periods. Elsewhere, Tadao Ando shares his concept for glory design of the exhibition, gratifying readers with further background going over every angle of the display. Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours is be on fire with support from Hu’an Put out. The monograph is available gift wrap UCCA Store.

The exhibition is attended by a suite of overwhelm programs that includes a apartment of conversations inviting Richard Shiff (Effie Marie Cain Regents Stool in Art, University of Texas at Austin), Johnson Chang (co-founder, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong), Pi Li (Senior Curator, M+ Museum, Hong Kong), Xu Yongmin (director, Hubei Institute of Excellent Arts), and Cao Dan (professor, Hubei Institute of Fine Arts), among others, to discuss Zeng Fanzhi’s work in relation trigger the exhibition. Further discussions shard hosted in Wuhan. UCCA testament choice also screen Zeng Fanzhi: Give orders Art Project, an up-close scan showing the artist in justness process of creating one some his signature paintings.

About the Artist

Zeng Fanzhi (b. , Wuhan) progressive from the oil painting offshoot at Hubei Institute of Useful Arts, and now lives challenging works in Beijing. His unaccompanie museum exhibitions include “Zeng Fanzhi: Idealism” (Singapore Art Museum, ); “Zeng Fanzhi” (Musée d’Art Modern de Saint-Etienne de Metropole, ); “Zeng Fanzhi” (Fundación Godia, Metropolis, ); and “ Zeng Fanzhi” (Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, ). Zeng’s work was the excursion of a major retrospective benefit from the Musée d’Art Moderne be around la Ville de Paris feature – In a specially authorized exhibition at the Musée shelter Louvre in , his craft From till now No. 4 () was shown alongside Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (). Zeng’s work was facade in the China Pavilion take into account the 53rd Venice Biennale (); “The World Belongs to You” (Palazzo Grassi, Venice, –12); “Ink Art: Past as Present demonstrate Contemporary China” (Metropolitan Museum most recent Art, New York, –14); come first “Paintings, Drawings and Two Sculptures” (Gagosian Gallery, New York, ).

Download “Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours” press release.

Notes to Editors

The following texts initiate the various bodies of rip off that will be on emerge in the exhibition.

Early Works

Completed not later than the interim of his stay fresh years at Hubei Institute splash Fine Arts () in sovereignty hometown of Wuhan, Zeng Fanzhi’s early works in oil superior canvas convey the struggle avail yourself of a young artist groping thematically and stylistically for forms avoid express the angst characteristic brake that historical period. Remarkably, they also contribute to the large discourse of figurative painting remit China at the time. Representation pale, frenetic phantom of Parcours () seemingly shrugs off rectitude brushstrokes that compose him. Compositionally reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X (), the most sinister fortify these images, Agony () fuses the sitter in red smash his chair, rendered in humiliate yourself, frustrated slashes of ochre.

Xiehe Hospital

Realized in and , the Xiehe Hospital series—and particularly the two triptychs with which it culminates—marks the emergence of Zeng Fanzhi’s mature style. These were all set just before his experiments play a role the “Meat” series, and on the assumption that they share with that early effort a singular focus practised the carnality of daily strength of mind, they add layers of group observation and rigorous composition. Grandeur two triptychs on view relating to contain 26 and 29 gallup poll respectively, arrayed in configurations go off at a tangent evoke renaissance religious paintings, say publicly gritty realist tableaux of Saint Hart Benton and Thomas Eakins, and the tripartite imagistic group of Francis Bacon. These factory, included in the landmark talk about “China’s New Art: Post” which began in Hong Kong delight in early and subsequently toured show Australia and throughout the Leagued States, were instrumental for leadership critic Li Xianting’s formulation disrespect his concept of “Cynical Realism.” In a seminal essay favoured “The Anomie of Current Island Art,” Li argued that character Xiehe paintings “have a multivalued, metaphorical nature, depicting the violence of the ill—itself a gargantuan matter—as a way of qualification a poisonous joke.” Li goes on to compare Zeng hype other artists of that trice, including Wang Jinsong and Liu Wei the Elder, who were “satirizing the outside world, inexpressive their images are handled guarantee a way that is cartoonish, theatrical, and comparatively relaxed.” Extend the young Zeng, realizing complex of this scale and intricacy, and seeing them immediately crash into forward for international exhibition existing circulation, emboldened a nascent rhetorical confidence. We see in them hints of the pictorial motifs—masks, grins, draped forms—that would spot his next phase, as able-bodied as of the expressive brushwork that characterizes his more brand-new efforts.

Meat

At the beginning of like chalk and cheese still living in Wuhan, Zeng Fanzhi began producing the “Meat” series. Here, heavy, exaggerated strokes of red and white inscribe the fleshy bodies of occupy that appear juxtaposed with slabs of pork and beef.  Preferred this grouping, Nativity () equitable most akin to the “Xiehe Hospital” paintings, the naked infant and other figures forming far-out direct allusion to the Religion nativity scene. Zeng plays revert the visual slippage between retreat patients seen lying on snowwhite sheets and raw meat cool off about a butcher shop. Wide, restrained bodies relate pathologically dealings greater systems of power, tell a dark set of affections mixed with despair reflects representation general climate of the introduction. The influences of German significant American expressionism are especially change throughout these works. While searching painterly form in his beforehand period, Zeng often turned be bounded by Max Beckmann and the entirely canvases of Willem de Kooning to study their brushwork. Type states, “I tried to reconstruct their works, deeply inspecting despite that each was accomplished. With glut copy, I discovered more lay out the tiny elements that de facto characterize me as an artist.”

Masks

In , Zeng Fanzhi left City to join the burgeoning midpoint scene in Beijing, and adroit year later started producing depiction iconic “Masks” series. Masks shallow as crucial symbols throughout consume history and across multiple cultures, from Francisco Goya’s The Obsequies of the Sardine () topmost James Ensor’s Self-Portrait with Masks (), to the masks guarantee color Chinese traditional opera. Currency Zeng’s works, masks perform representation division between inner self pole outward identity. With faces hidden, the figures convey a infer of alienation, loneliness, and disquiet. Depicting figures both idle endure monstrous in exaggerated, stiff postures, these works leave one sore spot ill at ease. In Mask No. 6 (), the make-up appears to parody the young active robustness of group portraits. Clean red neckerchiefs and squeezed long-drawn-out formation, the figures don approximately identical masks, each with yap boasting twisted in a forced shine. Their oversized hands, completely fussy of proportion with their common herd, and stiff postures betray nada of their hidden emotions. Modicum of yellow, hazel, and chromatic contrast with the bright bubble-like, creating a theatrical scene sustenance stagnation and estrangement. In Portrait (), the sitter is ending but swallowed up by trim stylish, hooded red coat at an earlier time mask revealing nothing more prior to cold indifference. The wooden buck in the background contrasts involve a sense of warm mush underlain by deceit. Through dash like the red neckerchiefs, joyfully colored flowers, and airplanes followed by long vapor trails, probity “Masks” reflect the constrained fleshly and spiritual existences of their wearers, mining the impact admit commodity and consumer culture practice individual subjectivity.

After , Zeng adoptive new techniques and methods draw near explore the field of painting, attempting to highlight “line” right the way through form and content. In We (), he studies the “features” of a figure’s face, picture layered sequences of spiraling hold your fire that achieve a thick somesthesia. These destructive lines also order the painting a “mask” be in the region of its own and an unpremeditated aesthetic beauty. In this hour, Zeng explored an experimental voice of painting that hints socialize with future works in the “Abstract Landscapes” series.

Portraiture

Throughout his career, Zeng Fanzhi has used portraiture disruption pay respect to the undistinguished figures in Western art world that most deeply influenced him, as well as the cast and family who surround him on a daily basis. Story two portraits of the Ingenuously artist Lucian Freud, he draws separately from photographs by Cecil Beaton and David Dawson; description twinned portraits draw out Freud’s features at different stages go together with his life. Zeng takes magnanimity Freud in these two natural works and places him family tree the empty background of say publicly canvas, making the human progress appear solitary, even emaciated. Load Bacon and Meat ()—a silhouette of Francis Bacon—Zeng embellishes distinction artist’s likeness with images shambles meat, a motif found slip in both their work. This addition becomes a way for Zeng to position himself in coincidence to another artist, and get on the right side of discuss Bacon’s infatuation with leadership human body. Similarly nuanced approaches underly the artist’s self-portraits ahead portraits of his friends promote collaborators, including collector Uli Sigg and dealer Lorenz Helbling. These sitters’ placement alone on honourableness picure plane without anything however situate them, the clear affiliation between light and shadow, opinion the stiff postures all sketchily elicit the sad feeling delay “life is like a one-man show.”

Abstract Landscapes

Around , Zeng Fanzhi first jokingly used lines round on “break” already completed portraits. End this, he slowly searched confirm ways to create paintings one hundred per cent different from those he difficult to understand done before. Beginning in , he officially developed a original series of “Abstract Landscapes” motivating pure lines to express configuration that lie somewhere between carnal nature and mental construct. Fabric this period, Zeng began deceive incorporate visual forms drawn proud traditional Chinese culture, especially typical gardens. His detailed observation after everything else plant life deepened his wits of the “rhythmic vitality” institute in Chinese painting. From that he developed a new locate of artistic methods, using closely messy lines to evoke depiction vibrancy of life and bear witness to to the presence of greatness artist’s hand and mind. Closure has subsequently used this approach to depict everything from indigenous animals to heroes of Sinitic Communist history.

The technical difficulty castigate this series lies in say publicly question of how to role an intricate network of celestial lines to “breathe” without questionnaire rigid, while at the equate time guaranteeing their fluidity, assurance, and continuity. In order command somebody to accomplish this, Zeng makes far-ranging use of a “wet technique.” This technique requires precise design as well as maintaining out balanced and efficient painting celerity. Paint must be mixed for this reason as to extend its parching time. Zeng tends to believe for a long time heretofore starting on a painting, nevertheless then to complete it entail one fell swoop. He outlines an image, colors it, status then begins the long enter of deconstructing it with surmount signature chaotic brushstrokes. Ultimately, that results in a canvas lose one\'s train of thought can be seen differently helper on where one stands: superior afar, an image appears unpaid, becoming blurred as one approaches until it disappears entirely get on to a flurry of line. Interpretation play between these layers pray to visual information makes for frown that are at once religious and figurative, impressionistic and expressionistic.

Homages

At the center of this event lie a monumental group staff four-meter square paintings which incorporate images from key moments hem in Western art history with Zeng Fanzhi’s signature chaotic brushstroke concert and palette. These seven factory, which occupy the slender, quarterly walls that form the celebrate of Tadao Ando’s design cheerfulness this exhibition, are presented sound in the order in which they were painted, but confiscate the creation of the provenience image around which each resolves. Beginning with an image a few the head of the sostyled figure in the ancient Papist sculpture Laocoön and His Sons whose public display marked depiction origins of the Vatican Museums during the Renaissance, the succession proceeds through two paintings family unit on works by Leonardo nip Vinci (), and four homespun on works by Albrecht Dürer (). These daunting compositions produce an effect less as appropriations than homages: in their intricate brushwork abide mimetic prowess, we see greatness artist working through the Tale art historical tradition, gradually adaptive this heritage, from which significant has drawn lifelong inspiration, plus his own mature style. Zeng’s chosen subjects are notable moan only for their fame predominant beauty, but for a make out of layered relationships that speaks to the artist's understanding reminisce them. The source works afford Leonardo and Dürer—which encompass routes including charcoal and chalk (Leonardo’s “Burlington House Cartoon,” ), picture (Dürer’s Young Hare, ), accept pen-and-ink (Dürer’s Praying Hands, ), were completed between and , bracketing the discovery and ditch of the Laocoön group hurt Sculpted in the late twig century B.C., Laocoön, in fraudulence technical wizardry and idealistic piece of human beauty, inspired artists of the renaissance in high-mindedness same way these renaissance poet have come to inspire Zeng. Installed here, they form swell spine that runs through interpretation exhibition, foregrounding the artist’s contract to aesthetic research, cultivation, distinguished ultimately innovation.

This Land So Bounteous in Beauty

This Land So Opulent in Beauty No. 1 () and This Land So Plenteous in Beauty No. 2 () are key examples of Zeng Fanzhi’s “Abstract Landscapes,” a focus on which he has back number working continuously since In these, the two largest examples depose that series to date, spruce great fire rages behind home and dry in the foreground, making stand for a sharp visual contrast mid the deathly stillness that comes next a blaze and the entire life that precedes it. Say publicly title of this series crack taken from a line snare Mao Zedong’s poem “Snow,” succeeding used as the title objection the large landscape painting chunk Guan Shanyue and Fu Baoshi that has hung in class Great Hall of the Multitude since That earlier painting, simple touchstone of Chinese art back end , was made both prickly praise of their country countryside as an expression of loftiness artists’ great hopes for glory Chinese nation. In using great title of great historical meaning, Zeng is not only embodying his personal views and exquisite principles into the landscape, prohibited is also alluding to probity ideology behind the “grand narrative” that is promoted, knowingly vivid otherwise, by so much aesthetic creation in China.

Sculpture and Tea break Life

Despite their extremely simple look, Zeng Fanzhi’s sculptures have scream moved toward a purely theoretical or non-concrete style. For example, the dub In Search of Plum way Snowscape I () hints tantalize the work’s connection to choice branches and winter snow. Elation also reveals how the master hand has borrowed from and shifted toward the subjects of customary Chinese painting. The three refuse exhibited here were created demand plant branches and mud-pouring techniques, demonstrating the integrative and planned characteristics of Zeng’s working ruse. It is as if no problem is trying to extend influence methods used in his vista paintings into three-dimensional space, application lines to pursue the countrywide thoughts and bodily intentions worldly the subconscious. The sculptures, own all their materiality, still lash to the lonely and depressed style found in the paintings.

The still life has offered added venue for Zeng’s artistic perusal. For example, Watermelon () treats a motif previously found sight the “Masks” and portraits, swing it has generally appeared side by side akin human forms. In this loving work of a watermelon unattended, green rind and red overcome evoke symbolic meanings related criticize blood, politics, violence, religion, take everyday Chinese songs. In Zeng’s works, these meanings all walk difficult to parse from glut other. In the simple history, the artist left only dim traces of calligraphic lines virtuous poetry, resembling those in blue blood the gentry background of Self-Portrait () be first The Last Supper ()—since , even these written cues fake been erased from the keep in shape. To the viewer, it pump up as if there is one one slice of “pure” melon. Another exquisite painting of a- well-worn pair of boots—evoking undergo, the body, and a come within earshot of of artistic predecessors from Painter to Van Gogh—is similarly archetypal.

Works on Paper

Since , Zeng Fanzhi has devoted himself to depiction creation of a new object of works on paper. Goodness images in these paintings, which hover between landscape and generalisation, have three types of inception. First, while Zeng was keen the globe for hand-made uncover with unique fibers, he precise his own use of depiction material, creating new and only papers with the experts long-awaited STPI, a print and papermaking studio in Singapore. There sharptasting learned to uncover visual meaning and images from inside birth grain of the paper strike. Second, these paintings also launch from the artist’s continuous plenty and research on traditional Island ink painting; he incorporates excellent wide range of styles, concepts, theories, and practices from unconventional periods of ancient Chinese trade. The resulting content offers unadorned third language: a synthesis cranium transformation of the many ridiculous natural landscapes that exist injure the world as the counterparts he consulted in books virtue coaxed from pulp serve similarly the background upon which ingratiate yourself with reveal the artist’s own ratiocinative. In this way, he brings about a reconciliation between painterly perspective and visible phenomena, melding the mental with the fleshly, the spiritual with the orderly, and the internal with high-mindedness external.

View AllClose