Zeng Fanzhi was born on 1964 in Wuhan, China. In the beginning of his artistic career Zeng Fanzhi painted apocalyptic, expressionist images, thus manipulating modernist compositional effects to intensify his sinister version of reality. His representational work reveals the place of the unconscious, the aberrant, in the construction of experience.
The large, clenched hands of his subjects are almost more conspicuous than their stereotyped faces and wide-open eyes. Transcending narrative resolution, these images simply unfold. What Zeng Fanzhi re-creates in his art simulates the fatigue of contemporary experience: the rush to acquire and consume, just to the extent of feeling increasingly alienated and detached. Working in idiosyncratic ways, he reminds us how effective art can be when it collapses these varieties of experience.
He traces the eruption of the corporeal into the optical sedition of visual art. Zeng Fanzhi’s notorious mask series mark a turn in his aesthetic expression. All the figures in the series wear a white mask, which fuses so closely to the facial features that it is almost unnoticeable as a face covering. While difficult, the masks nevertheless have a peculiar, haunting power. Zeng still paints oversized, gnarled hands, but the tragedy has been superseded by the disruption of order: his figures acting seemingly tense or fearful, as if they were victims of their roles. Through the motif of the mask, Zeng Fanzhi expresses suspended reality.
The mood of his work is subtle unsettlement: It often suggests some past violence, recent or old, to whom we can unravel clues – but never completely understand. His paintings are much more than sardonically recycled imagery. Zeng Fanzhi delivers an art that feels new, not in its premises but in its brutal, yet refined, vitality and constant renewal. Today he lives and works in Beijing.
Exhibitions:
2009 "Zeng Fanzhi", Acquavella Gallery, New York, USA
"Narcissus looks for Echo", Suzhou Museum, Suzhou, China2008 Tai Ping You Wiang. ShangArt Beijing
Tai Ping You Xiang, Shanghai Art Gallery, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Zeng Fanzhi, Godia Fundation, Barcelona
2008 "Tai Ping You Xiang", Shanghart Gallery Beijing, Beijing
2007 Musée d'Art moderne de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne
Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
Idealism, Singapore art museum, Singapore
2006 Zeng Fanzhi's Solo-Exhibition with New Paintings, ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, China
Zeng Fanzhi – Paintings, Wedel, London
2005 • Sky, Fine Art Literature, Wuhan, China
Zeng Fanzhi, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
2004 Scapes - Zeng Fanzhi works from 1989-2004, Hexiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen，China
Face, Soobin Gallery, Singapore
Unmask the Mask - Zeng Fanzhi, Gallery Artside, Korea
2003 We, ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, China
2001 Raw Beneath the Mask, ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, China
1998 Zeng Fanzhi Works 1993-1998, CIFA Gallery, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, China
1995 Behind the Mask, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
1990 Zeng Fanzhi, Hubei Institute of Fine Arts Gallery, Hubei, China
Group shows
2010 Reshaping History, Beijing
The constructed dimension, National art museum of China, Beijing
Openning of Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
Clouds - power of asian contemporary artists, Soka art centre, Beijing
2009 53rd Biennale di Venezia, Making worlds, Venice
Contemporary art from Hunana & Hube 1985-2009, Guangdong museum of art, Guangzhou
2009 "Boao Asia Contemporary art exhibition - 'Contemplation and communication'", Boao Asian Forum International meeting Center, Hannan, China
2008 "21st Century China, Art between Identity and Transformation", Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, Italy
"China Gold", Museum Maillol, Paris, France
2007 China Now, Cobra Museum, Amstelveen
Floating - New generation of Art in China, National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul
Neue Asiatische Kunst. Thermocline of Art, ZKM | Museum für Neue Kunst & Medienmuseum, Karlsruhe
Inferno in Paradise - 10 YEARS ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING, Berlin
Individual Positions 1, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
2006 Contemporary China, PKM Gallery - Seoul, Seoul
Jiang Hu, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York City, NY
2005 Mahjong - Chinesische Gegenwartskunst, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern
2004 "Stone Face" BANG - China's first group printing exhibition, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai
2003 Rotational Summer Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong, SAR
New Painting 2003, Yibo Gallery, Shanghai
2002 The 1st Guangzhou Trienal, Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, Guangdong
2001 Initial Image, Yibo Gallery, Shanghai
Summer Exhibition-From Neo-realism to Postmodernism, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
