Zheng Chongbin 鄭重賓 Shanghai, China, b. 1961

Zheng Chongbin (b.1961, Shanghai) received his BFA in classical Chinese painting from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1984 and stayed at the academy to teach upon graduation. As one of China’s preeminent young experimental ink painters in the 1980s, Zheng presented his first solo exhibition at the Shanghai Museum of Art in 1988. In the following year, he received a fellowship from the San Francisco Art Institute to study installation, performance, and conceptual art, where he obtained his MFA in 1991. Zheng lives and works in San Francisco and Shanghai.

Central to Zheng’s art is the notion that the world is always in flux, consisting of flows of matter and energy that repeatedly cohere and dissipate. Through the interactions of ink, acrylic, water, paper, and light, Zheng systematically deconstructs classical Chinese ink tradition and Western pictorial abstraction conventions, mimicking the processes found in nature. In his videos and installations, Zheng explores the structures that emerge from within the chaotic human existence.

Zheng’s works are collected by many important institutions and collections internationally, including: the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, United States; the British Museum, United Kingdom; the Brooklyn Museum, United States; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, United States; the M+ Museum, Hong Kong; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; among others.

In 2025, Zheng Chongbin will be presenting a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the United States, and a permanent installation at the Museum of East Asian Art (Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln) in Cologne, Germany. It is the first-ever public art project funded by the government of Cologne.