SHARING WITH ME

Working backwards as I am and that’s exactly what the exhibition of Zeng Fanzhi did too. A reverse order presentation of some 40 paintings and a couple of sculptures spanning the period from 2013 back to 1990.Not too many have titles. You may remember that when I was in China, one of the centres told me that a Chinese artist had to be known overseas before he was recognized in China. This apparently was not the case with Fanzhi. He was born in Wuhan (1964) which is in China’s Hubei province. In art school he was influenced by both Western and Chinese contemporary art although I am not sure how he could have access to Western art in the early 90’s. After all, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, were student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing which took place in the spring and received broad support from city residents, exposing deep splits within China's political leadership. The protests were forcibly suppressed by hardline leaders who ordered the military to enforce martia