Kwai Fung proudly presents “ A Journey from the Song Dynasty Tradition to the 21st Century Modernity ” — a solo exhibition of Shanghai based Taiwanese painter Zheng Zai-Dong in October 2012.
Zheng Zai-Dong was born in 1953 in Taipei, Taiwan.
During his youth, he was deeply influenced by Existentialism, and his painting style was modelled on Expressionism. The series of works which first brought to him attention depicts powerfully and with strong pictorial tension the emptiness and distress into which young men under the blockaded environment of Taiwan during 1960s and 1970s fell. Since 1980s, he began to explore the art of painting of the Song and Yuan dynasties, in search for a new art direction from the old tradition. In the last 20 years, he has visited all scenic attractions in China, and he spent most of his time in Shanghai, for the purpose of entering into the world of Chinese literati, which was established through cultural deposition for many centuries, and of studying on site the Chinese traditional culture. Gradually, he forms a life attitude based upon the old studies, he pursues a life of taste cultivated from hobbies in poems reading, calligraphy, painting, cultural relics studies and antiques collection. His philosophy and life style are reflected fully in his art development, works from his recent years invariably carry a kind of subtle sentimentality unique to the Oriental world.
From 2011, he started a new landscapes series. It is a record of what he saw and thought when he followed the footprints of the scholars in the Chinese history to visit the famous mountains and rivers in China. This journey covers not only land space, it is more a trip through time, an exploration of history and a research on the Chinese traditional world perception, life philosophy and aesthetics. In his paintings, landscapes are no longer mere images of outer objects, they represent a comprehensive system of attitudes and perceptions.
Under his strokes, scenes of West Lake, The Three Gorges, Li River and Huang Shan Mountain invariably illustrate the unique understanding of Chinese on the relationship between Man and his outer world and on the co-existence between Man and the universe. These works are stuffed with the artistic conception pursued by traditional Chinese poets as well.
On the skill of expression, Zheng is equipped with both the Chinese style of understated elegance and the Western openness. In particular, his use of colours is noticeably not restricted by the constraints of the traditional rules. Often, he infuses subtly his works with the Western mastery of colours, lifting the artistic beauty captured by the traditional skills up to a new level.
Having returned to the traditional Chinese aesthetic standards from the Western influences he received in his early years, Zheng finds anchorage again upon the very deep and broad Chinese cultural base. His path in fact unveils a very meaningful inspiration as to the next step in the development of the Chinese contemporary art. The Chinese contemporary art movement stemmed from the “85 New Wave” has all along been built upon the Western perceptions, methods and measurements. A culture created from transplantation always raises concerns, on its ultimate significance and on its sustainability. Zheng retreats from the “avant-garde frontier”, exploring deep into his own blood-tied tradition which is then taken as his base for going forward again. This is perhaps the new direction that Chinese contemporary artists need to consider seriously.
ZHENG has shown his works many times at solo and group exhibitions, both domestically and internationally, at venues including Taipei American Cultural Centre, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan. In 1992, he received the honour of Lion Art Creation Award.
This exhibition will show 20 pieces of the latest representative works of Zheng Zai-Dong.
