ZHENG GUOGU
b.1970, Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, China
Zheng Guogu is a conceptual Chinese artist who emerged in the 1990s amid the profound shifts of China’s opening to a globalized world. Zheng sets out experimentation based in tradition. Religion, philosophy, Yin and Yang, balance of energy are some of the key inspirations to his practice and daily lives. He re-fashions elements of thangkas into a hallucinatory image using digital technologies. The buddhist images are layered and transcended with a set of palettes that deems to benefit the balance of body and mind. He was a founding member of Yangjiang Group, an art collective focusing on experimental Chinese calligraphy.
Zheng Guogu’s recent solo exhibitions include “Fellow Travellers,” ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2025; “The Writings of Today are a Promise for Tomorrow,” Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art at Jax, Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, 2024; “Zheng Guogu: Visionary Transformation,” MoMA PS1, New York, USA (2019); “Zheng Guogu: The Winding Path to Trueness,” Mirrored Gardens, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China (2017); “Zheng Guogu: Where energy inhabits?,” Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France (2016); Zheng Guogu: Ubiquitous Plasma, OCAT Xi'an, Xi’an, China (2015); Zheng Guogu & Yangjiang Group: The Writings of Today are a Promise for Tomorrow, Palazzo Morozini, Venice, Italy (2015), and etc.
His works are widely collected by world museums and renowned private collections, including Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A; M+ Collection, Hong Kong; POMERANZ COLLECTION, Vienna, Austria; DSL Collection, Paris, France, and etc.
Exhibitions
Transformation of Practices
Images of Magnetic Resonance
7.12 - 8.24, 2014
Beijing
Garden of Pine: Also Fierce Than Tiger II
8.14 - 9.30, 2010
Beijing
Press / News
REVIEW: Yangjiang Group’s Genre-Defying Acts at 4A Sydney
My introduction to the Chinese artist collective Yangjiang Group came in the form of an elaborate tea ceremony at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney where an impressive array of tea making apparatus and tea drinking paraphernalia. The act of taking tea is a common means of “breaking the ice,” which the Yangjiang Group’s tea ceremony did remarkably well, especially because of the language barrier. But it also served as an introduction to the Group’s practice and to the exhibition I was at 4A to see, “Actions for Tomorrow.”
Spaghetti Calligraphy! The Yangjiang Group Plays with their Food in New Show
It’s no secret that banqueting plays an important role in Chinese culture, and needless to say no exhibition opening here is complete without some serious eating and drinking. But for their first show in Hong Kong at Blindspot Gallery, Chinese artist collective theYangjiang Group have taken this cultural phenomenon a bit further, not only showing work created partly out of food, but also turning the leftovers from their opening night banquet into art works on the spot.
The Yangjiang artist collective was founded in the eponymous Pearl River Delta town in 2002 by Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan and Sun Qinglin, and even though they pursue independent careers much of their work is still realized together. For their current show “After Dinner Shufa” — or "After Dinner Calligraphy” — at Blindspot, they took their frequent bohemian drunken dinners together as the starting point for their work.