''In a sense, in these works, the artist has begun to leave the 'figurativeness' of tradition and place the significance borne of the works into human visual and physiological instincts. The sense of collision in the works transcends the images, and the symbols and themes also transcend judgement of the medium and culture. '' Pi Li
"In these new works, another subtle transformation occurred. The directness of Zeng Fanzhi's early works was reemphasized. Aside from the brush strokes and lines, the artist began to use the penetration between oil colors as the major structural and organizational technique on the canvas. While destroying the integrality of the image, they also provide it with an unprecedented sense of dimensionality. These works do not evoke our moral judgement through the image of a main character or the details of some specific time, but rather evoke our natural instincts, intuition and even physiological instinctive "reactions" though the sense of incompletion and collision of the works. The artist is not compressing the gravitational center of artistic creation into a symbolic creation but rather has embodied them among the transformation and collision of techniques. This has carried the viewer's judgment from a moral and ethical level to a visual and physiological one. In a sense, in these works, Zeng Fanzhi has begun to leave the "figurativeness"of tradition and place the significance borne of the works into human visual and physiological instincts. In achieving this, the works take on an unprecedented energy. The sense of collision in the works transcends the images, and the symbols and themes also transcend judgement of the medium and culture. The visual tension in the works is transformed into a psychological tension."
--Pi Li
Zeng Fanzhi, born in Wuhan in 1964, graduated at Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 1991
ShanghArt
2a Gaolan Rd. Shanghai