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Zheng Chongbin

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Contemporary California-based visual artist
Zheng Chongbin
Born1961 (age 62–63)
Shanghai
NationalityAmerican
EducationSan Francisco Art Institute; Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art)
OccupationArtist
Websitehttps://www.zhengchongbin.com/

Zheng Chongbin (born 1961, Shanghai) is an American contemporary visual artist, who has worked in ink and acrylic paintings, light and space installations and digital media. His practice is influenced by New Materialism. Zheng's works are located in museum and private collections in the USA, Europe and Asia, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s British Museum and Hong Kong’s M+.

Early life

Zheng started his art training in 1970s Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), taking private art classes run by Mu Yilin and Chen Jialing. During his formative years China's art education system followed the principles of classic Chinese art and Soviet Socialist Realism. Zheng's graduation project was influenced by this environment, resulting in gongbi ink paintings, depicting scenes of Tibetan rural life and labour, observed during a 1983 trip to Tibet.

From 1984 to 1988, Zheng worked as a teacher in figurative Chinese ink painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. During the 1980s, China's Open Door Policy allowed access to previously forbidden art forms, including Impressionism and American Abstract Expressionism. In 1985, Zheng travelled to Beijing with artist Andreas Schmid to see an exhibition Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange at Beijing’s National Art Museum of China. These exposures impacted Zheng's early works, including Another State of Man (second half of the 1980s), where he combined ink and acrylic on paper to create anthropomorphic figures inspired by Francis Bacon and Max Beckmann. In 1988, Zheng had a solo exhibition Chongbin Zheng, organised by the Shanghai Art Museum.

Zheng moved to California in 1988. He completed the First International Fellowship and the MFA degree at the San Francisco Art Institute between 1989 and 1991. Zheng studied installation art under the guidance of David Ireland, Tom Marioni and Tony Labat. In 1992, he received his green card and established his residence in the San Francisco Bay Area. During this transitional period, his work Dual Heads (1994), commented on the divided cultural identity experienced by Asian American migrants.

Recent works

Ink media paintings

In the later 1990s, Zheng started making ink paintings. He arranges his paintings, including Unfolding Landscape (2015), as a series of cut and folded paper sheets, mounted at various angles, while applying diverse textures of ink and acrylic paint. His techniques include moving a scraper along the surface of just-poured paint, which results in the emergence of spontaneously created dots and fractal lines within the artwork. Zheng is interested in New Materialism, resonating with the writings of scholars Karen Barad, Quentin Meillassoux and Timothy Morton.

Zheng Chongbin, Wall of Skies, 2015, Light and Space installation

Light and space installations

Examples of Zheng's light and space installations include Liquid Space (2019), exhibited in 2019 at the Ryosoku-in temple within the Kennin-ji temple complex in Kyoto, and Wall of Skies (2015), shown at the 2016 Eleventh Shanghai Biennale.  He incorporates see-through scrims, optical light films and custom-built reflective surfaces, like the mirrored floor used in Wall of Skies. 

Digital media works

Projection of Zheng Chongbin's Chimeric Landscape (2015) at Art on theMART, Chicago, 2018

Zheng's first digital video work was Chimeric Landscape (2015), installed at Pallazzo Bembo in Venice in 2015. Zheng used footage of various life forms, combining snapshots of the natural world, such as splashing waves, with scientific materials, including topographical NASA images and microscopic views of molecules. In 2018, Chimeric Landscape was adapted for an exhibition Art on theMART, displayed onto Chicago’s historic building theMART. 

Additional examples of Zheng’s digital media installations include State of Oscillation (2020), exhibited at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Branches Are Roots in the Sky (2017), exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Exhibitions

Installation of Zheng Chongbin's I Look for the Sky (2020) at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2021

Selected solo exhibitions

  • A 10,000-Year View (2022, Hong Kong Museum of Art)
  • Zheng Chongbin: I Look for the Sky (2021, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco)
  • Liquid Space (2019, Ryosoku-in Temple, Kennin-ji, Kyoto)
  • Zheng Chongbin: Clusters of Memory (2017, Asia Society, Houston)
  • The Pacific Project: Zheng Chongbin (2016, Orange County Museum of Art, New Port)
  • Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form (2013, INK studio, Beijing)
  • White Ink: Fresharp Artists’ Series (2011, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco)

Selected group exhibitions

  • Ink Dreams: Selections from the Fondation INK Collection (2021, Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
  • Art on theMART (2018, Chicago’s city public art project)
  • Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang (2018, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University)
  • Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China (2017, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)  
  • Why Not Ask Again (2016, Eleventh Shanghai Biennale)
  • Personal Structures: Crossing Borders (2015, organised by European Cultural Centre, held at Palazzo Bembo and Palazzo Mora, Venice)
  • From a Poem to the Sunset: Daimler Art Collection (2015, Daimler Contemporary Berlin)
  • Ink: The Art of China (2012, Saatchi Gallery, London)
  • China’s Imperial Modern: The Painter’s Craft (2012, University of Alberta Museums, Edmonton)
  • Reboot (2007, Third Chengdu Biennale)

Awards

  • San Francisco Art Institute’s First International Fellowship, 1989
  • Commission from Moshe Safdie Associates and Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands for a site-specific installation Rising Forest (2008-2010) This installation was displayed at Marina Bay Sands alongside works by artists Antony Gormley and Sol LeWitt.
  • Artist Excellence Exhibition Series Grant by the San Francisco Chinese Cultural Foundation (2010-2011)
  • Inaugural Artist for a Chicago-based digital art project Art on theMART, 2018
  • Asia Game Changer West Award from the Asia Society’s Northern California Center, 2021 

References

  1. ^ Sinelnyk, Alina (2021). Repositioning Contemporary Chinese-Ink Medium Art, 1978-2018: Zheng Chongbin – Migration, Internationalisation, Digitisation. University of Edinburgh. pp. 172–176. doi:10.7488/era/1597. OCLC 1308429766.
  2. ^ "Zheng Chongbin". INK studio.
  3. Erickson, Britta (2014). "Establishing Spirit in the Sea of Ink: Zheng Chongbin from Impulse to Form". In Erickson, Britta (ed.). Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form. Beijing: INK studio. pp. 5–17. ISBN 978-0615864532.
  4. Kraus, Richard Curt (1991). Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520072855.
  5. ^ Erickson, Britta (2014). "Timeline". In Erickson, Britta (ed.). Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form. Beijing: INK studio. pp. 106–113. ISBN 978-0615864532.
  6. DeBevoise, Jane; Wong, Phoebe (2007). "Interview with Shen Kuiyi". Asia Art Archive - Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990.
  7. Sinelnyk, Alina (2021). Repositioning Contemporary Chinese-Ink Medium Art, 1978-2018: Zheng Chongbin – Migration, Internationalisation, Digitisation (PhD diss.). University of Edinburgh. p. 54. doi:10.7488/era/1597. OCLC 1308429766.
  8. Godfrey, Tony (2011). "Zheng Chongbin: Ten Metaphors with Which to Experience His Paintings". Yishu. 10: 27–40.
  9. Starr, Kevin (10 September 1989). "A Dream Deferred". The San Francisco Chronicle. pp. 44–50.
  10. Sinelnyk, Alina (2021). Repositioning Contemporary Chinese-Ink Medium Art, 1978-2018: Zheng Chongbin – Migration, Internationalisation, Digitisation (PhD diss.). University of Edinburgh. pp. 97, 100. doi:10.7488/era/1597. OCLC 1308429766.
  11. Sinelnyk, Alina (2021). Repositioning Contemporary Chinese-Ink Medium Art, 1978-2018: Zheng Chongbin – Migration, Internationalisation, Digitisation (PhD diss.). University of Edinburgh. pp. 128–130. doi:10.7488/era/1597. OCLC 1308429766.
  12. Wood, Sura (2010-02-28). "Distant, familiar, new Shanghai in art exhibit". Oakland Tribune. p. 46.
  13. Agnew, Mary (2013). "Medium above All: Examining the Work of Zheng Chongbin". In Lee, Lynn; Xu, Erick; Zhao, Sunny (eds.). Negotiating between Light and Ink. Beijing: Asia Art Centre. pp. 16–17. OCLC 859152813.
  14. "Unfolding Landscape: Zheng Chongbin". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  15. Erickson, Britta (2016). "The Enduring Passion for Ink – A Project on Contemporary Ink Painters". Kanopy.
  16. Kovskaya, Maya (2015). "Becoming Landscape: Diffractive Unfoldings of Light, Space, and Matter in the New Work of Zheng Chongbin". Yishu. 14: 6–21.
  17. ^ Claypool, Lisa (2019). "Liquid Space: A Conversation with Zheng Chongbin". Yishu. 18: 100–107.
  18. ^ Erickson, Britta (2015). Zheng Chongbin: Wall of Skies. Beijing: INK studio.
  19. ^ De Jongh, Karlyn; Gold, Sarah; Romagnini, Valeria; Rietmeyer, Rene (2015). "Zheng Chongbin". In De Jongh, Karlyn; Gold, Sarah; Romagnini, Valeria; Rietmeyer, Rene (eds.). Personal Structures: Crossing Borders. Leiden: Global Art Affairs Foundation. pp. 314–317. ISBN 9789490784188.
  20. Van Proyen, Mark. "With a Sudden Vigor it Doth Possess: Zheng Chongbin's Recent Paintings and Video Work". INK studio.
  21. "Obscura Digital, Globally-Recognized Leader in Experiential Technology, to Project Art on theMART". GlobeNewswire. 26 September 2018.
  22. ^ "Exhibition: Zheng Chongbin: I Look for the Sky". Asian Art Museum. 2021.
  23. "Branches are Roots in the Sky: Zheng Chongbin". Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  24. "Zheng Chongbin: A 10,000-Year View: A Site-Specific Art Installation". Hong Kong Museum of Art.
  25. Chen, Abby; Kovskaya, Maya (2021). Zheng Chongbin: I Look for the Sky. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum. ISBN 9780939117901.
  26. "Zheng Chongbin: Clusters of Memory". Asia Society.
  27. "Orange County Museum of Art Unveils Two New Installations as Part of its Pacific Initiative". ArtDaily.
  28. "Impulse, Matter, Form". INK studio.
  29. Tedford, Matthew Harrison, ed. (2011). Zheng Chongbin: White Ink. San Francisco & Santa Clara: Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco & Silicon Valley Asian Art Centre. ISBN 9780982274460.
  30. "Ink Dreams: Selections from the Fondation INK Collection". Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  31. Susanna, Ferrell (2021). Ink Dreams: Selections from the Fondation INK collection. Los Angeles and New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, DelMonico Books and D.A.P. ISBN 9781942884989.
  32. ^ "Zheng Chongbin". Art on theMART.
  33. "Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang". Cantor Arts Center.
  34. Vinograd, Richard; Huang, Ellen (2018). Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9781503606845.
  35. "Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  36. Arnold, Frances (2016). "Raqs Media Collective's Shanghai Biennale Finally Ditches the Overdone Dichotomy between East and West". Artsy News.
  37. "From a Poem to the Sunset: First Part of an Exhibition Series with New Acquisitions of Contemporary Chinese and International Art". Daimler Contemporary. 2015.
  38. Ink: The Art of China. London: Saatchi Gallery. 2012. OCLC 1358644130.
  39. Chattopadhyay, Collette; Chen, Abby; Shen, Kuiyi (2012). China's Imperial Modern: The Painter's Craft. Edmonton: University of Alberta Museums. ISBN 9781551952918.
  40. Feng, Bin; Shen, Kuiyi, eds. (2007). Reboot: The Third Chengdu Biennale. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House. ISBN 9787531028802.
  41. Chin, Andrea (2010). "Moshe Safdie: Marina Bay Sands Opens". designboom.
  42. "2021 Asia Game Changer West Awards Virtual Gala: Honoring Innovative Leaders Impacting Asia and the World". Asia Society. 2021.
  43. "2021 Asia Game Changer West Awards: Honoring Zheng Chongbin". Asia Society.

External links

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