Zheng Chongbin, who splits his time between San Francisco and his native Shanghai, has probed the boundary between Western abstract expressionism and the most vital tenets of China’s long ink tradition for many years. Using a unique mix of ink and white acrylic paint Zheng’s virtuosic works have been championed by many critics as a sign of ink painting’s great comeback. Using bold strokes that play ‘void’ against ‘fullness’, the simple marriage of physical materials become Zheng’s stage for the spiritual resonance of xuan’s moyun to perform. In his project “Floating Ink” Zheng installs a forest of faux columns at the center of the gallery space which float above stacks of xuan paper. The newly added columns funnel ink onto the paper stacks below instilling them with new meaning in the process.
Read MoreTo me the physical character of Xuan paper is all about absorbance and emergence. It is a vehicle in which the mind can inject meaning. The dripping from the columns impregnates the paper, and from this staining, meaning slowly emerges, as a visual poetics. Thus, the paper becomes the object that records gravity, mutability, volatility, and what takes shape is a transformation that is both physical and mental.
Zheng’s painting philosophy is one in which he purports to have no stylistic aims- only a quest for a sense of ‘hidden openness’. “Floating Ink” embodies this philosophy by positing the tenacious against the fragile, one of the essences of China’s long tradition. Photo of the artist courtesy of Artshare.com.
