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ZHU JINSHI

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b. 1954, Beijing, China

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As an important Asian contemporary art practitioner who rose to prominence in the second half of the 20th century, Zhu Jinshi has experimented with a wide range of mediums and methods. Amidst the historic Eastern and Western cultural currents of the Cold War, he tirelessly promoted and became part of the Asian experience. In 1979, Zhu participated in the “Stars”, China’s first contemporary art movement, and in the 1980s, he explored abstract painting and “apartment exhibitions”. In 1986, he moved to Germany and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the 1990s, he started his installation practice, and after the year 2000, he engaged with Chinese abstract neo-expressionist painting and large-scale installation.

 

Abstract painting has always been a focal point in Zhu’s practice, but he has engaged with the aesthetic fissures and tectonic shifts between the many different artistic mediums and movements that emerged in the postwar period. While reconciling and resisting abstraction, orientalism, installation art, conceptual art, and land art, he holistically considered ways in which painting could be contemporary. Zhu Jinshi is not a conceptual artist; he is an inventor of formal aesthetics. The seams, the thickness, the viewing perspective, the fluidity, the compression, the materiality and spatiality of the paint, and other visual forms have shaped his distinctive painting style. Zhu constantly seeks out new visual frontiers and creates accidental aesthetics.

 

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 ”Accidental Aesthetics”, Tang Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2022; “Li Bai’s Snow”, Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, 2020; “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”, Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2015.

 

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” , Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2016; “28 Chinese”, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA, 2013.

 

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.