With the mix of figurative realism, expressionism, and abstract
expressionism portraits currently on display on the walls of Hauser & Wirth
gallery in London, you may be forgiven for thinking you’ve walked into a joint exhibition
by different artists. But these are all works by Zeng Fanzhi, produced over the
last 29 years.
Zeng is arguably one of the most established Chinese
contemporary artists and this latest mini-retrospective underlines why he has
remained relevant: unlike many of his contemporaries, he hasn’t stuck to just one
style, instead constantly experimenting and reinventing his approach.
 |
| At Zeng Fanzhi in the Studio preview |
Hauser & Wirth is dedicating three of its spaces – a
first for the gallery – to Zeng Fanzhi.
In the Studio, a multi-location single exhibition unified around Zeng’s
painterly investigations. While London hosts an exhibition dedicated to the
evolution of his portraiture, a smaller but recurring part of his practice, the
gallery in Zurich focuses on his most recent wild stroke landscapes that have
moved further toward full abstraction and the show in Hong Kong (opening Oct 8)
will present recent works created around the artist’s exploration of the
relationship between Zhao Gan’s Early
Snow on the River (late 10th c.) and Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire series.
The London exhibition has been divided into two spaces with
one side presenting a series of carefully selected works by the artist (including
several from his personal collection) that span his entire career, from a 1989
small portrait of a fellow student completed while he was still studying oil
painting at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts to his seminal Mask series and his most recent wild strokes portraits of Van Goh
(2017‑2018). The second space is almost entirely dedicated to works created
this year (other than one 2017 Lucian
Freud portrait), hinting to the latest development in the artist’s career but
also a return to self-portraits after a 10-year break.
Born in 1964 during the Cultural Revolution, Zeng was schooled
in Social Realism that encouraged a narrative-based painting method and realist
techniques, but he showed a rebellious streak early on as he absorbed the ideas
and techniques of German Expressionists and Abstract Expressionists.
The earliest portrait in the London exhibition, Smiling Beck-ning (1989) shows the clear
influence of Willem de Kooning on the young student and presages the style of
his first two big series (Hospital
and Meat) that used a lot of red as
an emotional color to represent the brutal conditions of human existence. The
sitter, one of his classmates, is shown with his arm relaxed along his body,
seemingly ignoring the large black spider crawling up one of his sleeves, but
his facial features are heavily deformed (suggesting inner conflicts). The
portrait is created in thick stark white and gray strokes that contrast with
the blood red background.
Next to it is another early work from his student days, A Man in Melancholy (1990), which also
holds a special place in the artist’s heart as it was the first time he used a
palette knife, a technique he often revisited. That palette knife still sits in
his studio in a special red box, Zeng told COBO, adding he still uses it
regularly.
Zeng bought the two paintings at auction in recent years
and says he did so because he felt they were his most important early works,
“not so much because they are great portraits but because through these two
paintings I had a kind of epiphany or revelation” (in terms of using his inner
feeling to portray his sitters). A Man in Melancholy show his sullen-looking
sitter with large wide-open eyes and oversized hands, two key features that
would reappears in the artist’s work over the next decade.
Throughout the 1990s while most of Zeng’s contemporaries created
works as more overt political and social commentaries on the fast changing face
of China and the rise of consumerism, Zeng remained resolutely inward in his
approach, preferring to focus on his own emotions. Soon after moving from Wuhan
to the more cosmopolitan Beijing in 1993, the artist started on his seminal Mask series, portraying the well-dressed
urbanites hiding their emotions behind white masks. The works exuded a strong
sense of solitude and restlessness that mirrored the artist’s own feeling at
the time. Disappointingly, the exhibition is presenting only one painting from
the series.
Fearing he might be pigeon-holed, the artist started to
remove the mask (completely abandoning the series in 2001), and continued with
his portraits using his palette knife to create distinct paint traces from the head,
moving upward toward the sky as if elevating the sitter’s spirit.
Around 2004, Zeng developed a chaotic-strokes style, sometimes
using two hands, even using several brushes at the same time, as he moved
toward abstraction in order to “forget skill and become freer” in his
expression. While he initially focused on landscapes and nature, he continued
to create numerous portraits using that technique with the face of his sitters
still recognizable even though sometimes completely obscured by the strokes. On
view are his most recent examples reinterpreting self-portraits of Vincent Van
Gogh where Zeng seeks to perceive the Dutch artist’s spontaneous emotions. Zeng
explains that while abstract landscapes have dominated his practice in the last
15 years, he applies the same mood and concept to his figurative works,
pointing out that in traditional Chinese ink painting there was no clear
difference between abstraction and figuration.
Zeng has used self-portrait sporadically throughout his
career as a reflection of his own progression as an artist, particularly when
he feels he has reached a “new stage,” as well as an opportunity to reflect on
his own state of mind.
Zeng Fanzhi. In the
Studio presents several new self-portraits that will stylistically surprise
the viewer. Two portraits present the artist from the back looking at or
working on a Renaissance statue (one of them a full length Christ). Coming
full-circle with his youth, the artist is using a very realistic technique
showcasing his draftsmanship skills (particularly evident in his treatment of
folds on his clothing). “This work is really about looking back at my journey,
about becoming an artist, 30 years of very hard work, training. I would not
have been able to achieve this very high standard of finish 30 years ago, and
now I’m very confident about my newfound skills and knowledge,” he says.
In another
set of three paintings, Zeng portrays himself with a bowed head to suggest the
meditative processes that are intrinsic to his creative process. While the
portraits were based on a series of photographs of him, the pose was inspired
by a Sushi chef Zeng had observed, who, like the artist, “was extremely
concentrated and focused about his work.” Drop of paints have been flicked onto
the canvas in a very controlled manner, a new technique the artist has been
investigating over the last couple of years.
AS FIRST PUBLISHED ON COBOSOCIAL.COM (OCTOBER 4, 2018)