Opening: 2013.09.04, 3 PM
Date: 2013.09.04-2013.10.27

ARTMIA Foundation is pleased to announce the opening on September 4th of Zheng Zaidong’s solo exhibition “My mind in unsullied languor: revisiting then and there”. This is another important exhibition since Zheng Zaidong’s solo exhibition “Majestic landscape” at ARTMIA in 2011. This exhibition will feature his recent new paintings through which viewers can take a glimpse of the artist’s ongoing journey into the canonical realm of Chinese reference by projecting the image of the time and space of China’s revered past.

A quiet, yet definite change occurs in his new works: the previous works shown in Majestic Landscape seemed mute and distant with hardly any trace of human presence, and they evoke, in its entirety, the colorful restoration and re-interpretation of the ink-washed past that has been shot through subdued intensity and reminiscence. On the other hand, each of Zheng Zaidong’s new paintings engages the audience in different narrations, which have been buried in the grain of the history of Chinese paintings and literature. To observe the work of art through an art-historical vantage point leads us to imagine how the artist tries to come to terms with the artistic formulation of the past; to criticize, reinterpret, idealize, or to participate in. In other words, we attempt to see how the artist articulates his aesthetic words upon the backdrop of the entanglement of the conversation between past and present. In my personal view, Chinese landscape painting is a superb example that reveals this arduous communication with traditional thoughts. How Chinese landscape paintings are evolved through different literati painters, that is, and what kind of conversation they churned out with the ancient masters are what creates the Chinese story of art.

I am aware that there is an undeniable presence, in the Chinese art scene, of artists who are persistently engaged with the reinterpretation of Chinese landscape painting by referencing Chinese traditional philosophies and ideas. Zheng Zaidong’s artistic motivation can be understood in relation to this inclination that the artists try to bring out the traditional narration as a contemporary visual language. One might question on what ground their artistic effort bears relevance to the present world. I can almost hear common disparaging remarks from some of our contemporaries: ‘Tradition is one thing, change is another’, or ‘We have to move on with a globalized perspective.’ All of these protests are only partly true. Chinese contemporary art is built on drastic social changes and the economic growth of China – the majority of the contents of Chinese contemporary art will go through quicksilver changes of painful expressions of any capitalist society – the very same stories as the Western world. Chinese art will soon be forced to divert from the path parallel to the Western art world and find a way to tell the audience something different. With much hindsight, it will be interesting to reflect on from what the Chinese contemporary art can draw its inspiration, breaking away from the inertia of the contemporary art that thrives on the scars of human civilization.

Another interesting feature which sheds light on the understanding of Zheng Zaidong’s recent paintings is his use of the image of Ni Zan(1301-1374). We can literally take this borrowing of Ni Zan’s story as Chen Tsai-Tung’s self-representation; how he projects his identity as an artist in present time and space. He seems to make a parallel with Ni Zan’s social stance that has been embodied through pared-down techniques and his own views of the swirling contemporary world – the quiet resolution to keep a certain distance from the reality. If this is true, Zheng Zaidong’s style of self-projection is clearly rare amongst the spectrum of the social images of the contemporary artists today. I am sure he is aware of this. I imagine that the ancient literati painters were conscious of their own withdrawal from the turbulent reality when they drew images of scholars huddled inside caves that were made almost invisible – yet not quite to the extent of non-existence – in the majestic layers of mountains and valleys. That was their conscious choice and their own way of making comments about the social phenomenon. In this vein, the artist’s perception of his or her individuality as an artist against a society in which their existence is enmeshed, and the representation of the self, has been a crucial point of art history. Perhaps, this is the story that Zheng Zaidong’s art suggests to serious viewers beyond his visual diction – never tightly controlled and leaving it insubstantial as it is. I feel a fresh breath of wind through Zheng Zaidong’s languorous detachment in this world where many of us are inflamed by a striking obsession with definite direction, intense focus or idiosyncratic strategies.