Born in 1981, contemporary artist Zeng Pu has exhibited across China since 2002. This solo exhibition of his most recent works witnesses the emergence of a distinctive artistic personality, for the uniqueness of his style, technical virtuosity and portrayal of intimate subjects.

Like apparitions from a dream, Zeng Pu’s subjects- humans, dogs, fictive creatures- remind us of portraiture’s poetic license. With a few strokes of the paintbrush, his paintings are capable of expressing complex personalities, emotions and sexualities, much like caricatures. Zeng Pu draws attention to certain features of his subjects (such as eyes and lips) through the use of color, and uses their physical positioning to tell a story. In one portrait, the most discernible features of a woman are her searing red lips, exposed neckline; and closed eyes; expressing a captivating moment of ecstasy.

His minimalist style also serves as a sort of ‘aesthetic poetry’. In his paintings, we are allowed to celebrate the materiality of the paint itself as it ebbs and flows across the canvas. In a work inspired by pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais’ ‘Ophelia,’ the floating body of Ophelia seamlessly merges into a murky, aqueous background, conveying not only the tragedy of her slow death but also the beauty of the paintwork. In this mélange of minimalism, expressionism and blurred technique, Zeng Pu renders his works all at once accessible and distant- in another painting, it is impossible to discern whether the couple kissing is heterosexual or homosexual because their features are so androgynous. However, it is in their very enigma that renders Zeng Pu’s artworks so refreshingly contemporary. In true postmodernist spirit, for Zeng Pu the artist is only the conjurer- it is up to the viewer to decide.