UT Supra, Sic Infra. As above, so below. This is the philosophical ethos of Zheng Chongbin’s design. Based in San Francisco’s Bay area, Chongbin creates paintings by layering ink and paint on each other, transforming the canvases into topographic elements. He lets his canvases breathe; He lets them react naturally to the paint – his work draws, spells, cracks, leaps onto the canvas. His paintings focus on natural formations from mountain peaks, riverbeds and faults in blood lines, skin matrix and synapses. They witness to the viewer just as much as the viewer does to them. Chongbin In addition, it combines the applied movement of paint on the canvas and, by doing so, concentrates his work with more import, although it is felt by them.
Through his comprehensive use of painting, Light-and-Space installations and digital media, chongbin has infused nature and vitality into his body, drawing our attention to illusion and life. In “Zheng Chongbin: The Golden State,” his solo exhibition at Lacma, he casts his eye on the geographical area of California. Bringing together the artist’s previous works and new contributions, this exhibition is a systematic display of images and constructions that have acquired rights and temporality with a didactic interpretation.
“It’s nature that I interact with. It’s organic,” Chongbin told Speculation, explaining how his practice revolves around a unique, organic quality behind each subject. “My logical understanding – it’s established [art]-It feels like a part of your body… not in a traditional way, but a normal way, in the way you interact with the extensions of your body. And so you feel like you’re dealing with dealing with living things … you’re not helping. You actually help what’s going on. “
Born in Shanghai in 1961, Chongbin was raised during China’s cultural renaissance and thus trained in ancient rural art forms, particularly within the ink culture. In 1978, China’s open policy allowed the assimilation of western ideas, materials and art forms that were once forbidden. Among these Western art traditions, Chongbin was heavily influenced by abstract decoration, German movement and light movement and space, as well as some artists such as Francis Bacon, the installation of the concept of Robert Irwin and the sharp methods of Larry Irwin and the sharp methods of Larry Pelh.
These inspirations are readily apparent in Chongbin’s work, which shares a visual kinship with western art movements while maintaining a dialogue with the ink traditions in which he was intellectually trained. In this van, Chongbin deliberately gives his work of psychology, which allows its art to have its own inner world that reaches beyond it, one of the forces of art years and borders of countries, and rather it comes directly. His physical practice, of course, reflects this flexibility – his final pieces, regardless of medium, are often textured and kinetic. They share a precious lifeblood.
One of Chongbin’s few paintings is the use of color, Gold Status . In this painting, chongbin chose to paint on shrimp paper, a light material made from sandalwood bark, and doing so gave Gold Status unique quality, breathable. Chongbin gives his materials agency, allowing the paint to crack and peel away as new layers are applied while still maintaining its bold presence and – in its case Gold Status– Brilliant colors.
“It feels natural,” Chongbin said, recalling the effect of painting the penetrating microfibers, a teaching color through the delicate veins of the paper. “Everything [that goes] through my skin … things that happen not only on the surface, but also happen in the middle [and] on the other side. It is a very living organism. The space changes and the surface becomes the space … You have this kind of Indevelical tracing of the Classic way of work. “
However, as noted, chongbin rarely paints in color, his paintings often negotiate with each other, not only in form and style but in composition. Agitation (2013) no Gold Status they are active diseases of the other. There Gold Status mainly seen in the sky of California, reproducing its sunlight made of natural materials, Agitation look at the world; Its bands of black paint, painful with various ink blots, resemble mountain bases, rock cavities, egnel exdesions and cooling magma. Both paintings, as well as Chongbin’s work, reflect on the spatial knowledge of nature. Both monumel pieces, rising eight, nine or ten feet high, envelop the viewer in the discovery of their nature.
“I’m always checking… What’s going on in the face [and] What’s going on underneath, “Chongbin said.” All those bold lines are an illusion of what’s going on underneath. The water is actually like a dream down the stairs, through the slope and goes under the direction. I want to find nature rather than being shown. “
Chongbin regaled us with stories of his adventures on the hiking trails of Marin County’s hiking trails and wandered the northern beaches of the north country. He saw “dead things alive.” His installation, Chimeric landscape (2015), was inspired by such an association. Chongbin described looking at a sand dollar from a boyfriend and seeing a pile of life’s money. He was also surprised by the amazing iridescence created when he shines in the sun. He was amazed at its breath – its millions of small lights that come together like a “velvety matrix of a sand dollar wall.”
and Chimeric landscapeHe inserts short clips of water, ink, cell functions and other ephemera into Euclidean geometries until they are finished and finished transforming again. The installation celebrates the small breath of life that these inanimate objects take while organizing their spatial distribution. “The structure of Chimeric landscape It is clearly an illegal narrative, “explains.” This one basic we see that we meet is the flow of ink, but the symbol of water is used, but water is shown in many constructions and emerging qualities that I think are essential elements of everything – our bodies and the world. “
This idea of nature clicks through every work in the Lacma Show, invoking spirits that range from the monumental to the microscopic. Whether creating cosmos out of ephemera or simulacalrum out of words, chongbin places equal emphasis – equal importance – on his art. He interacts with both the physical and the mental, allowing one to appreciate the other, ensuring that what happens above reflects below.
“Zheng Chongbin: The Golden State” is on view at Lacma on January 4, 2026.
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