Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Li Bai’s Snow”, the solo exhibition artist Zhu Jinshi, at our Hong Kong gallery space. The exhibition will feature an array of over 25 works of Zhu’s iconic heavily layered and textured oil works created between 2012 – 2020. The exhibition will also showcase a petite series of works which were specially created for this Hong Kong exhibition.
Born in Beijing in 1954, and Zhu is part of China’s avant-garde. Zhu’s brushwork is energetic, decisive, powerful, and unwavering, and his work is intensely colored. Heavily influenced by his time in Berlin, the thick colors in his work are evocative to the stylistic aesthetics favored by the German Expressionists.
When the Stars art group in mainland China were founded in 1979, the Stars art group included notable dissident artists who once challenged the aesthetic system and publicly exhibited their works of art. Zhu Jinshi was one of the participants, working and contributing different mediums such as photography, video, installation, and performance.
Zhu Jinshi’s solo exhibition, “Li Bai’s Snow,” adopts its name from the essence of Chinese poet Li Bai’s poems. Zhu’s paintings defy the boundaries that have been set between the particular media of abstraction, allowing one to have a diverse interpretation and understanding of abstract art. Viewers are invited to view Zhu Jinshi’s “ thick paintings ” of various scales and as with all of Zhu’s works, one is able to relate to the artist’s inherent interest in creating meaning from material.
Artist
Zhu Jinshi
b.1954, Beijing, China
Zhu Jinshi produces abstract paintings whose surfaces are built up with thick, near-sculptural layers of oil paint. Resembling colorful landscapes, Zhu’s images range in palette and scale, but the artist is known to always apply his oil paint with spatulas and shovels. Producing dense lashings of color, the artist’s method recalls the style and techniques espoused by the German Expressionists, who Zhu was profoundly influenced by during his years living in Berlin. Zhu belonged to a group of Chinese avant-garde artists named the Stars, which formed in 1979 to challenge aesthetic conventions and exhibit their work publicly.
Zhu Jinshi is a pioneer of Chinese abstract art and installation art. At present, he lives and works in Beijing. Zhu’s major solo exhibitions include “Wood · Character” (2020), Fusion Art Center, Beijing, China; The Ship of Time / Rejecting River Currents (2018), Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, China; Zhu Jinshi (2016), Yuan Art Museum, Beijing, China; Performance in Paint: Zhu Jinshi (2015), Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China. His major group shows include “TRILOGY OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN CHINA: The Scar” (2020-2021), Busan Museum of Art, Busan, Korea; “AND NOW. The second decade of the White Rabbit Collection” (2020-2021), White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; “Ways of Working: Artists’ Time, Space and Body” (2020), One Art Museum, Beijing; The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China (2019), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA；Abstract and Beyond—The Research Exhibition of Abstract Art in China (2016), Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China; 28 Chinese (2013), The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; The 5th Shanghai Biennale: Hyper Design (2006), Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Orient/Ation, 4th International Istanbul Biennial in Turkey (1995), Istanbul, Turkey; Chinese Avant-Garde Art (1993), Palace of World Culture, Berlin, Germany; The 2nd Xing Xing (Stars Group) Exhibition (1980), National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China.
Zhu Jinshi’s works have been collected internationally by notable public and private collections：Allison and Warren Kander, USA; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA; Basma Al Sulaiman Museum of Contemporary Art, Saudi Arabia; Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; Busan Museum of Art, South Korea; Dean Valentine Collection, USA; Delphine Arnault, France; Deutsche Bank, Germany; East West Bank, USA; Fubon Art Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan; Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China; Mario Testino, UK; Minsheng Museum, Shanghai, China; M+ Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong, China; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; Picasso Foundation, Málaga, Spain; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Song Museum, Beijing, China; The Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; The Schaufler Collection, Sindelfingen, Germany; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia;Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Wall Art Gallery, Beijing, China; White Rabbit Collection, Sydney, Australia
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