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[[Category:People from San Francisco]]
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Revision as of 17:57, 9 March 2023

Zheng Chongbin (born 1961) is a contemporary visual artist, whose practice comprises multimedia works, including ink and acrylic paintings, Light and Space installations and digital media works. Originally born in China and trained in ink painting, Zheng focuses on reinterpreting the centuries-old pictorial genre of Chinese ink medium art by underlining ink’s material qualities and juxtaposing them with other material and ephemeral substances, like acrylic paint or spatially-conditioned light.[1] Having lived in California’s San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, the region’s distinctive light and space environment is another source that informs Zheng’s works across different media.[2] Overall, Zheng’s artistic practice looks at scientific and philosophical underpinnings of New Materialism, as part of which the world is viewed as a set of complexly and often speculatively interwoven interactions (whether molecular or climatic) affecting both animate and non-animate forms of matter, like plants or objects.[3]

Zheng Chongbin
Born1961 (age 61)
Shanghai
NationalityAmerican
EducationSan Francisco Art Institute, USA; Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art), Hangzhou, China
OccupationArtist
Known forLight and Space installations, ink paintings, digital media works
Websitehttps://www.zhengchongbin.com/

The artist’s works can be found in worldwide museum and private collections across the USA, Europe and Asia, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s British Museum and Hong Kong’s M+.[4] In 2016 Zheng's Light and Space installation Wall of Skies was exhibited at the Eleventh Shanghai Biennale.[5] Most recently, in 2018 Zheng became Inaugural Artist for Art on theMART - the public digital art project, organised by Vornado Realty Trust in collaboration with the City of Chicago, which is set to run for 30 years.[6] [7] Zheng's latest solo exhibitions include Liquid Space at the Zen temple Ryosoku-in, Kennin-ji temple complex, Kyoto (2019), and I Look for the Sky at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2021).[8] [9] In 2021 the artist also received Asia Game Changer West Award from the Asia Society’s Northern California Center.[10] [11]

Early Life and 1980s Works

Zheng started his artistic training back in 1970s Shanghai during the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), taking private art classes with artists Mu Yilin and Chen Jialing.[12] Between 1980 and 1984 Zheng completed his BFA at the Chinese Painting Department at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou.[4] During these years the art education system in China still largely followed the principles of Soviet Socialist Realism, but the study of classical Chinese ink art was already reinstated, following the end of the Cultural Revolution.[13] Thus, for his graduation project Zheng created a series of gongbi (refined brushwork) ink paintings, depicting Tibetan rural life and labour scenes, recorded first-hand during the artist’s field trip to Tibet in 1983.[14]

Following his graduation, between 1984 and 1988 Zheng went on to become a teacher in figurative Chinese ink painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts.[4] In the light of Open Door Policy, China’s artists in the 1980s started gaining access to various books and magazines about previously forbidden during the Cultural Revolution art forms, ranging from Impressionism to American Abstract Expressionism.[15] In 1985 Zheng also travelled to Beijing with his friend and artist Andreas Schmid (at the time also an exchange student from Germany at the Zhejiang Academy) to see an exhibition Rauschenberg’s Overseas Cultural Interchange, held in 1985 at Beijing’s National Art Museum of China.[3] The exposure to these previously forbidden art forms got translated into Zheng’s early works, such as Another State of Man series (second half of the 1980s), where Zheng used ink and acrylic on paper to respond to Francis Bacon’s deformed anthropomorphic figures.[16]

1990s Cultural Identity Works

In 1988 Zheng travelled to study to California, where he eventually settled, following the completion of the First International Fellowship and the MFA degree at the San Francisco Art Institute between 1989 and 1991.[4] At the Institute Zheng focused on studying installation art that was taught by such local artists as David Ireland, Tom Marioni, Sam Tchakalian or Tony Labat among others.[3] In 1992 Zheng received his green card and settled in San Francisco Bay Area.[14] During this transitional period of settling in the USA, Zheng created a series of installation works that explored questions of cultural belonging and diasporic identity, such as Dual Heads (1994) – the installation commenting on the divided cultural identity of the diasporic Asian American subject, exhibited at Zheng’s self-curated exhibition Asian/American American/Asian, held at the Belcher Studios Gallery in San Francisco in 1994, and featuring works by New York-based Chinese-born artist Gu Wenda from New York and by San Francisco-based Japanese-born artist Reiko Goto.[3]

Recent Works

1. Ink Media Paintings

In the later 1990s Zheng started making more of ink paintings, focusing on the material possibilities of ink-on-paper works as well as site-specific spatial and lighting conditions in which they are displayed.[17] To underline the impact of time-sensitive phenomenological conditions on ink paintings, Zheng often arranges them as a series of cut and folded paper sheets, mounted at different angles, applying on them various textures of liquid ink and reflective paste-like acrylic paint, as illustrated by Unfolding Landscape (2015).[18] Another feature of Zheng’s ink paintings is related to the process of painting itself, during which the artist often lets his pictorial materials (ink, acrylic, water, paper) have material interactions of their own by, for example, moving a scraper along the surface of just-poured paint, resulting in self-emerged dots and fractal lines.[19] This shows the artist’s interest in New Materialism, where the wider world is seen as a series of unrelated and yet interconnected interactions, as explored in the recent philosophical writings by Karen Barad, Quentin Meillassoux or Timothy Morton among others.[1] [3]

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

2. Light and Space Installations

Similar to Zheng’s ink paintings, his Light and Space installations also focus on exploring the philosophical and scientific fields of Phenomenology and New Materialism, as can be seen in Liquid Space (2019, Ryosoku-in temple, Kennin-ji temple complex, Kyoto) or Wall of Skies (2015, shown at the 2016 Eleventh Shanghai Biennale).[8] [20] In these installations Zheng expanded the range of materials that he uses to have an interaction with light effects and wider spatial conditions, resorting to see-through scrims, optical light films or custom-built reflective surfaces, like a specular floor that was installed as part of Wall of Skies.[8] [20] According to Zheng, ‘experiencing the world is a cognitive journey’ – that is why, through the materiality of his Light and Space installations he focuses on activating the viewers’ cognitive and proprioceptive reactions, inviting them to acknowledge and explore how the wider environment impacts them.[21]

3. Digital Media Works

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

Zheng also uses digital media to interpret scientific and philosophical connotations of the world’s interconnectedness. His first digital video work to do this was Chimeric Landscape (2015), premiered at Pallazzo Bembo in Venice in 2015.[22] In this work Zheng cross-paralleled various scenes taken from the natural world and scientific data (such as NASA images) alongside snapshots of liquid ink paint to show how the world is interconnected, comprising ‘intra-actions’ on the material and beyond-material levels.[23] [24] The purpose of such digital works by Zheng as Chimeric Landscape is to make the viewer question various kinds of life forms and, as Timothy Morton put it, to ‘recognize our connection with them’, which makes our reality ‘a multitude of entangled strange strangers’.[25] In 2018 Chimeric Landscape was also adapted for an exhibition Art on theMART – ‘the largest permanent digital art projection in the world’, displayed onto Chicago’s historic building theMART.[26] Adapting his works to new environments is an important part of Zheng’s artistic practice as it allows the artist to explore how changes in environmental lighting or spatial conditions can re-describe or transform the original work.[3] Additional examples of Zheng’s digital media works include State of Oscillation (2020, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco) or Branches Are Roots in the Sky (2017, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) among others.[21] [27]

Exhibitions and Collections

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

Selected examples of Zheng’s solo exhibitions include:

  • A 10,000-Year View (2022, Hong Kong Museum of Art)[28]
  • Zheng Chongbin: I Look for the Sky (2021, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco)[21] [9]
  • Liquid Space (2019, Ryosoku-in Temple, Kennin-ji, Kyoto)[8]
  • Zheng Chongbin: Clusters of Memory (2017, Asia Society, Houston)[29]
  • The Pacific Project: Zheng Chongbin (2016, Orange County Museum of Art, New Port)[30]
  • Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form (2013, INK studio, Beijing)[31]
  • White Ink: Fresharp Artists’ Series (2011, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco)[32]

In 1989, shortly after moving to the USA from China, Zheng had a solo exhibition Introduction Show at San Francisco’s Bruce Velick Gallery.[3] Before that, in 1988 Zheng had a solo exhibition Chongbin Zheng, organised by the Shanghai Art Museum, which was featured on Shanghai’s local TV channel during the primetime news.[33]  

Selected examples of group exhibitions where Zheng’s works were represented to date include:

  • Ink Dreams: Selections from the Fondation INK Collection (2021, Los Angeles County Museum of Art)[34] [35]
  • Art on theMART (2018, Chicago’s city public art project)[6]
  • Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang (2018, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University)[36] [37]
  • Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China (2017, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)[38]  
  • Why Not Ask Again (2016, Eleventh Shanghai Biennale)[5]
  • Personal Structures: Crossing Borders (2015, organised by European Cultural Centre, held at Palazzo Bembo and Palazzo Mora, Venice)[22]
  • From a Poem to the Sunset: Daimler Art Collection (2015, Daimler Contemporary Berlin)[39]
  • Ink: The Art of China (2012, Saatchi Gallery, London)[40]
  • China’s Imperial Modern: The Painter’s Craft (2012, University of Alberta Museums, Edmonton)[41]
  • Reboot (2007, Third Chengdu Biennale)[42]

As part of and in addition to event programmes organised around the exhibitions, Zheng delivered a series of talks and lectures, such as a talk with ecophilosopher Timothy Morton and ecopolitical theorist Maya Kovskaya, held at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 2021, or a lecture given as part of 2014 Asia Contemporary Art Week in New York.[43] [44]

Zheng’s works can be found in worldwide public and private collections, including those of British Museum (London), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Orange County Museum of Art (Costa Mesa), Marina Bay Sands (Singapore), Mercedes-Benz Art Collection (Berlin), DSL Collection (Paris), M+ Museum (Hong Kong), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago) and Hong Kong Museum of Art (Hong Kong).[4]

Publications

In 2014 INK studio published a book Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form, distributed in the USA by D.A.P. and edited by scholar and curator Britta Erickson.[45] Zheng’s art was also the subject of Alina Sinelnyk’s doctoral thesis Repositioning Contemporary Chinese-Ink Medium Art, 1978-2018: Zheng Chongbin – Migration, Internationalisation, Digitisation, completed at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK) in 2021.[3]   

Selected examples of journal article publications about Zheng’s works include:

  • Tony Godfrey, ‘Zheng Chongbin: Ten Metaphors with Which to Experience His Paintings’, Yishu, 10 (2011), 27-40.[16]
  •  Lisa Claypool, ‘Architectonic Ink: Zheng Chongbin in Conversation with Lisa Claypool’, Yishu, 10 (2011), 41-53.[46]
  • Maya Kovskaya, ‘Becoming Landscape: Diffractive Unfoldings of Light, Space, and Matter in the New Work of Zheng Chongbin’, Yishu, 14 (2015), 6-21.[1]
  • Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, ‘Zheng Chongbin: Boundless Ink’, ArtAsiaPacific, 97 (2016), 124-131.[47]
  • Lisa Claypool, ‘Liquid Space: A Conversation with Zheng Chongbin’, Yishu, 18 (2019), 100-107.[8]
  • Alina Sinelnyk, ‘Curating the International Profile of Contemporary Chinese Ink Medium Art: The Third Chengdu Biennale (2007) and The Met’s Ink Art (2013–14)’, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 9 (2022), 289-312.[48]

Awards

In 2021 Zheng received Asia Game Changer West Award from the Asia Society’s Northern California Center.[10] [11] In 2018 Zheng was also awarded Inaugural Artist for a Chicago-based digital art project Art on theMART, becoming one of the four American artists to inaugurate the project.[6] Zheng’s earlier awards include Artist Excellence Exhibition Series Grant by the San Francisco Chinese Cultural Foundation (2010-11) as well as the commission from Moshe Safdie Associates and Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands for a site-specific installation Rising Forest (2008-2010), displayed at Marina Bay Sands alongside works by artists Antony Gormley and Sol LeWitt.[4] [49] In 1989 Zheng also became a recipient of the San Francisco Art Institute’s First International Fellowship.[4] 

References

  1. ^ a b c Kovskaya, Maya (2015). "Becoming Landscape: Diffractive Unfoldings of Light, Space, and Matter in the New Work of Zheng Chongbin". Yishu. 14: 6–21.
  2. ^ Wayne, Kenneth (2014). "Zheng and Abstract Expressionism: An Introduction". In Erickson, Britta (ed.). Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form. Beijing: INK studio. pp. 19–29. ISBN 978-0615864532.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Sinelnyk, Alina (2021). "Repositioning Contemporary Chinese-Ink Medium Art, 1978-2018: Zheng Chongbin – Migration, Internationalisation, Digitisation (PhD diss.)". University of Edinburgh. OCLC 1308429766.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g "Zheng Chongbin". INK studio.
  5. ^ a b Arnold, Frances (2016). "Raqs Media Collective's Shanghai Biennale Finally Ditches the Overdone Dichotomy between East and West". Artsy News.
  6. ^ a b c "Zheng Chongbin". Art on theMART.
  7. ^ "Project Summary". Art on theMART.
  8. ^ a b c d e Claypool, Lisa (2019). "Liquid Space: A Conversation with Zheng Chongbin". Yishu. 18: 100–107.
  9. ^ a b Chen, Abby; Kovskaya, Maya (2021). Zheng Chongbin: I Look for the Sky. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum. ISBN 9780939117901.
  10. ^ a b "2021 Asia Game Changer West Awards Virtual Gala: Honoring Innovative Leaders Impacting Asia and the World". Asia Society. 2021.
  11. ^ a b "2021 Asia Game Changer West Awards: Honoring Zheng Chongbin". Asia Society.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ Kraus, Richard Curt (1991). Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520072855.
  14. ^ a b Erickson, Britta (2014). "Timeline". In Erickson, Britta (ed.). Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form. Beijing: INK studio. pp. 106–113. ISBN 978-0615864532.
  15. ^ DeBevoise, Jane; Wong, Phoebe (2007). "Interview with Shen Kuiyi". Asia Art Archive - Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990.
  16. ^ a b Godfrey, Tony (2011). "Zheng Chongbin: Ten Metaphors with Which to Experience His Paintings". Yishu. 10: 27–40.
  17. ^ 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.
  18. ^ "Unfolding Landscape: Zheng Chongbin". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  19. ^ Erickson, Britta (2016). "The Enduring Passion for Ink – A Project on Contemporary Ink Painters". Kanopy.
  20. ^ a b Erickson, Britta (2015). Zheng Chongbin: Wall of Skies. Beijing: INK studio.
  21. ^ a b c "Exhibition: Zheng Chongbin: I Look for the Sky". Asian Art Museum. 2021.
  22. ^ a b 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.
  23. ^ Van Proyen, Mark. "With a Sudden Vigor it Doth Possess: Zheng Chongbin's Recent Paintings and Video Work". INK studio.
  24. ^ Barad, Karen (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 33. ISBN 9780822339014.
  25. ^ Morton, Timothy (2010). The Ecological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 15, 17. ISBN 9780674064225.
  26. ^ "Obscura Digital, Globally-Recognized Leader in Experiential Technology, to Project Art on theMART". GlobeNewswire. 26 September 2018.
  27. ^ "Branches are Roots in the Sky: Zheng Chongbin". Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  28. ^ "Zheng Chongbin: A 10,000-Year View: A Site-Specific Art Installation". Hong Kong Museum of Art.
  29. ^ "Zheng Chongbin: Clusters of Memory". Asia Society.
  30. ^ "Orange County Museum of Art Unveils Two New Installations as Part of its Pacific Initiative". ArtDaily.
  31. ^ "Impulse, Matter, Form". INK studio.
  32. ^ 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.
  33. ^ Starr, Kevin (10 September 1989). "A Dream Deferred". The San Francisco Chronicle. pp. 44–50.
  34. ^ "Ink Dreams: Selections from the Fondation INK Collection". Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  35. ^ 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.
  36. ^ "Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang". Cantor Arts Center.
  37. ^ 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.
  38. ^ "Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  39. ^ "From a Poem to the Sunset: First Part of an Exhibition Series with New Acquisitions of Contemporary Chinese and International Art". Daimler Contemporary. 2015.
  40. ^ Ink: The Art of China. London: Saatchi Gallery. 2012. OCLC 1358644130.
  41. ^ Chattopadhyay, Collette; Chen, Abby; Shen, Kuiyi (2012). China's Imperial Modern: The Painter's Craft. Edmonton: University of Alberta Museums. ISBN 9781551952918.
  42. ^ Feng, Bin; Shen, Kuiyi, eds. (2007). Reboot: The Third Chengdu Biennale. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House. ISBN 9787531028802.
  43. ^ "Zheng Chongbin with Ecophilosopher Timothy Morton and Ecopolitical Theorist Maya Kovskaya". Asian Art Museum. 2021.
  44. ^ "Field Meeting: Critical of the Future – Part 7". Asia Contemporary Art Week. 2014.
  45. ^ "Publication: Zheng Chongbin: Impulse, Matter, Form". INK studio.
  46. ^ Claypool, Lisa (2011). "Architectonic Ink: Zheng Chongbin in Conversation with Lisa Claypool". Yishu. 10: 41–53.
  47. ^ Beres, Tiffany Wai-Ying (2016). "Zheng Chongbin: Boundless Ink". ArtAsiaPacific. 97: 124–131.
  48. ^ Sinelnyk, Alina (2022). "Curating the International Profile of Contemporary Chinese Ink Medium Art: The Third Chengdu Biennale (2007) and The Met's Ink Art (2013–14)". Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. 9: 289–312.
  49. ^ Chin, Andrea (2010). "Moshe Safdie: Marina Bay Sands Opens". designboom.

Additional Resources

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