ZHENG LU

One of China's most talented rising artists, Zheng Lu (b. 1978) has come to prominence in recent years for his innovative sculptures and installations. Taking the underlying creation process from his three-dimensional constructions as inspiration, Zheng has delved into new conceptual ground with his most recent Image Resurfacing Series. Reacting to our modern-day passive consumption of images, the artist selects a variety of illustrated subjects ranging from current events to historical figures, and recreates them on aluminum panel using industrial lacquer. After an arduous process of rendering six to seven images, layered one on top of the other, the artist polishes his work, sanding it down with abrasives in order to expose the layers below. The resulting composition is no longer a representation - it has become a serendipitous interlacing of history, ideas, and voices: an abstraction. The final surface has dissolved the pictorial, and encapsulates what cannot be seen. Only the accompanying time-lapse video that has recorded Zheng's process can provide evidence of the work's composition.

Dedicated to exposing the strongest and most innovative artistic ideas from around Asia, Gajah Gallery is proud to present Zheng Lu's first solo exhibition of his Image Resurfacing Series. Image resurfacing is neither Zheng's playful repartee with the language of abstraction nor merely an enigmatic process of painterly alteration, rather, it is a bold conceptual step that extends the very definition of painting.