Zeng Fanzhi - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 15, 2007 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles

  • Exhibited

    Los Angeles, Roberts & Tilton, Jiang Hu 34 Contemporary Chinese Artists, April 29 - May 20, 2006

  • Catalogue Essay

    The virtuoso artist Zeng Fanzhi breaks down traditional painting categories to produce multi-faceted canvases grouped only by the artist’s personal style and vision. His works frequently overlay shades of mind and matter, abstraction and figuration, landscape and portrait.What appears a scenic setting may actually be a metaphor for an interior vision or psychology; a portrait may be, by extension, representative of an entire social or cultural motif.The present lot, from Zeng’s series of landscapes painted with multiple brushes in each hand, is a perfect exemplar of the artist’s recent trajectory.Two human figures roam the high, wild grasses, searching or being sought; perhaps they are lost, imaginary figments that occupy the temporary void present in the artist as well as each of his viewers. Or perhaps it is the landscape itself that poses the illusory challenge, a figurative narrative or puzzle that the wanderers must traverse before they come to rest. “The rhythm of lines merges into abstractness. Fine but simple structure is like a water painting, soft and elegant.The sense of music is brought by repetitive movement of the brush under the control of his consciousness, and the movement is right a reflection of his physical actions. He seizes all the time the feature of prearrangement and chance. He borrows abstractness from Chinese handwriting and refers to ‘zen,’ a state of unconsciousness but an accumulation of consciousness. Blending the consciousness into unconsciousness is a process of experiencing the ego.The clarity, simplicity and elegancy of his style are an exact manifestation of the abstractness of his art language – a combination of freedom, strength and rhythm. Features of Zeng's portraits are noticeable.While sketching he highlights the contrast between layers of colours and the sense of movement.The two brushes in his right hand inevitably lead to a conflict, that is, while the dominant brush moves as the mind goes the second keeps destroying the integrity. Distinctness and indistinctness, regularity and natural effect, gathering and dispersing are all conveyed in the portraits. Zeng pays much attention to the new language after ‘being negated,’ focusing on ‘what image’ is the ultimate pursuit in painting, which, as a matter of course, inspires him to doubt the definitions of image in the past,” (D. Huang, “Abstractness between ‘intentional’ and ‘unintentional,’” 2004, at http://shanghart.com).

77

Wandering

2005
Oil on linen.
67 x 98 1/2 in. (170.2 x 250.2 cm).
Signed and dated “Zeng Fanzhi [in Chinese and English] 2005” lower right.

Estimate
$500,000 - 700,000 

Sold for $601,000

Contemporary Art Part I

15 Nov 2007, 7pm
New York