2008-05-05 18:30
Tai Ping You Xiang - Zeng Fanzhi Solo-Exhibition June-Sept 2008
Date: May 24 – September 2, 2008
Venue: ShanghART Beijing, No. 261 Cao Chang Di, Old Airport Road, Beijing 100015, China
Tel: +86 10 6432 3202
Fax: +86 10 6432 4395
E-mail: infobj@shanghartgallery.com
Opening hours: 11am – 6 pm (Closed on Mondays)
‘Tai Ping You Xiang – Zeng Fanzhi at Shanghart Beijing’
‘Tai Ping You Xiang’is the title of a recent work by Zeng Fanzhi featuring a peaceful young elefant entering a Zeng Fanzhi signature landscapes. It is also the title of the exhibition at ShanghART's
‘Tai Ping You Xiang’ originates from a poem by ancient Chinese poet Lu You (southern Song dynasty, 1125-1210). It means peace, stability and happiness. ‘Xiang’ is elephant in English, it shares a same sound with ‘auspicious’ in Chinese; therefore, it symbolizes auspiciousness in traditional customs. The traditional pattern is a picture of an elephant carrying a vase on its back, and the water in the vase can bring good fortune to people and is a symbol of peace.
The painting techniques adopted in the new work are the same as Zeng Fanzhi’s series of landscape paintings and tend to be more peaceful, and the colours are lively and show a kind of incompatible tension. In this series of paintings, Zeng Fanzhi gradually weakened the uncertainty of the landscape itself, and tried to redefine the paintings from a deeper point of view especially the perspective of Chinese traditional culture. Under the background of the vanity of the society, the painting itself is expected to return to the nature.
In the beginning of his artistic career in the late 80’s, Zeng Fanzhi painted apocalyptic and expressionist images, and manipulated effects of modern composition to intensify the falseness of the reality. The over-sized and spastic hands, the subjects of his representational work, look even more remarkable than their unmeaning faces and wide-open eyes. The later works of Zeng Fanzhi – ‘Mask’ series was very well-known and a turning point of his individual aesthetics expression. In this series, all of the portraits are wearing white masks which are tied so closely with their facial features that masks almost become transparent. These characters are shown with nervousness and fear, as if they are the victims of their own roles. Through the theme of ‘Mask’ series, Zeng Fanzhi presents a real world without security. Then in his following landscape paintings, he is still expressing the same concept – eternal escape as though an attempt to redefine and analyze the dream world from the inner heart. Fragility and vulnerability are also included in the notion of these paintings, which are like trying to create a kind of uncertainty that seize individual characters and landscape depiction. These art works reveal a certain degree of enlightenment and reflect the artist’s splendid painting skills.
Zeng Fanzhi was born in 1964 in Wuhan Province, and studied oil painting at the
For further exhibitions news and artists information, please visit www.shanghartgallery.com
For high resolution DPI images, please contact Miss
Related Exhibitions:
Facebook
Instagram
WeChat 微信
