Zheng Chongbin 鄭重賓 Shanghai, China, b. 1961

Zheng Chongbin (b. 1961, China) received his BFA in classical Chinese painting from the elite China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1984 and stayed at the academy to teach upon graduation. As one of China’s most 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 of the world as always in flux, consisting of flows of matter and energy that repeatedly cohered and dissipated. Systematically exploring and deconstructing classical Chinese ink tradition and Western pictorial abstraction conventions – through the interactions of ink, acrylic, water, paper and light, Zheng’s paintings demonstrate the processes found in nature. In his videos and installations, Zheng explores the structures that emerge from within the human chaotic existence.

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