San Fransisco-based Chinese artist Zheng Chongbin joins RADII’s in-house podcast guru Wes Chen on this episode of China From All Angles to discuss his art journey in both China and the United States.
Born and raised in Shanghai in the 1960s, Zheng had a difficult childhood, to say the least. Not only did he survive the Great Chinese Famine, but also the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Fortunately for Zheng, when colleges were reopened, he was able to enroll at the elite China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he first trained as a classical Chinese figurative painter before teaching there for four years.
In 1988, he held his first solo exhibition at the Shanghai Museum of Art. Having been recognized as one of China’s preeminent young experimental ink painters in the 1980s, Zheng received a fellowship from the San Francisco Art Institute to study installation, performance, and conceptual art in 1989.
Fast forward to three decades later: Zheng is a resident of the Bay Area, which provides him with a constant supply of artistic inspiration. He is especially intrigued by the region’s rich ecology.
Zheng’s ink and acrylic works merge Western pictorial abstraction with classical Chinese calligraphy. They are housed in prestigious institutions such as the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Daimler Contemporary in Berlin, the DSL Collection in Paris, and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Listen to the episode below.
‘China From All Angles’ is brought to you by East-West Bank, the premier financial bridge between the US and China. Listen to the new podcast’s first episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, SoundCloud, and 小宇宙.
Cover image designed by Haedi Yue
