Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong will open Saturday a major exhibition by one of my favorite Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi that traces his wide-ranging depictions of the human figure in key paintings from the last twenty years. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.
Zeng’s aesthetic restlessness epitomizes the evolution of Chinese contemporary art in the post-1989
era, grappling with local history and tradition in the face of external influence and accelerated
change. Since the beginning of his career, he has presented a succession of powerfully introspective
subjects, from the haunting Hospital paintings to the livid Meat paintings that juxtapose human
subjects with butchered flesh; from the cryptic Mask paintings to starting, close-up portraits; from
intimate, existential still lifes such as Boots (2009) to depictions of pivotal Western cultural figures
such as Francis Bacon, whose psychic portraits altered the status of the human figure in twentieth
century art.
If you want to know more about this ever changing artist, check my previous posts.