Chambers Fine Art is pleased to participate The Art Show 2022 with works of Bay Area artist Zheng Chongbin at booth D3.
Born in Shanghai in 1961, Zheng graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou in 1984 and taught painting there until 1988. In 1989 he received a fellowship from the San Francisco Art Institute to study installation, performance, and conceptual art, receiving his MFA in 1991. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades, Zheng is inspired by the region's distinctive atmospheric and environmental effects and rich ecologies, as well as by the California light and space movement.
Zheng moves freely across a variety of media, a versatility that is highlighted in his large-scale installations I Look for the Sky, currently installed in the atrium of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and Liquid Space, that transformed the Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto in 2019, along with his immersive video pieces Material Play, shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2017, and Wall of Skies, exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale 2016-17 in The Power Station of Art. Complementing these public projects, the collection of new works specifically created for The Art Show provides contrast and context to Zheng’s artistic practice (the works shown in this presentation are works from the same series that are representative of the forthcoming pieces for the fair). The works presented will continue his longstanding experimentation with painting for which he has developed a personal language that mixes traditional Chinese elements (ink, Xuan paper) with Western tools and materials (brushes, acrylic, and other media) to create abstract, overlapping planar forms, mounted on aluminum.
Conversant with Western theory and Chinese classicism, Zheng recognizes the deep cultural meaning that is embedded within the traditional materials he uses, but rather than treat them as historical or ‘found’ objects, he activates them, allowing ink, paper, acrylic and water to interact with one another, generating endless visual possibilities. This body of work employs the use of aluminum planes to create added dimension to each piece, further bridging the gap between the artist’s installation work and his painting practice.