Solo exhibition by Zao Wou-ki.
[Press Release]
FEAST Projects is proud to announce ZAO WOU-KI－BEYOND, a solo exhibition of watercolour paintings by the prominent Chinese French artist ZAO WOU-KI.
“I can say now, without any risk of exaggeration, that Zao Wou-Ki is one of the greatest artists on the European scene.” I.M.Pei, Master of Modern Architecture.
At 92 years old, the Chinese French painter, ZAO Wou-Ki (趙無極) is one of the world’s most prominent contemporary artists. Highlights of his life long achievements include: election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France, the decoration of Grand Officier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur by the President of France, the Praemium Imperiale Award for Painting by the Japanese Art Association in Tokyo, Japan, and numerous important solo and retrospective shows in museums throughtout the world: the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in France; the National Art Museum of China; and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, to name a few.
Born in 1920, Zao began his training at the age of 15 at the School of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, under its founder Lin Fengmian. In 1948 he left China for Paris to study modern painting. Zao is part of the second generation of Chinese modern artists who went to Paris. With his two contemporaries Chu Teh-Chun and T’ang Haywen, he belongs to a group of “overseas” Chinese painters who merged Chinese and European philosophy of art and aesthetics by inventing their own new abstract language. Once established in Europe, Zao found resonance in the creative journeys of both Paul Cézanne and Paul Klee. He worked towards representing subconscious levels of experience, leading to a penetrating form of artistic expression that transcends east and west, and melds intuition and consciousness. The result is a new perception of the meaning of art.
On view will be a group of exceptional, large watercolour paintings coming directly from the artist’s studio, dated from 2004 to 2009. They belong to the most recent period in Zao Wou-Ki’s work: a series of large format watercolours that have dominated his pictorial output since 2004. The works show a masterly control mixed with a spontaneous fluidity. Some were inspired from nature, directly observing subjects such as flamboyant flowers, intertwining branches or a symphonic landscape. They convey with freshness and immediacy Zao’s intimate appreciation of Chinese and Western culture.
Zao Wou-Ki declares, “Although the influence of Paris is undeniable in all my training as an artist, I also wish to say that I have gradually rediscovered China. It has affirmed itself as my deeper personality. In my recent paintings, this is expressed in an innate manner. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is to Paris that I owe this return to my deepest origins.”
