On Wednesday, Gagosian Gallery will close the first New York exhibition devoted to Zeng Fanzhi, a leading figure among China’s post-Cultural Revolution artists, whom the art market website Larry’s List recently named the top-selling artist in the Chinese contemporary market.The show, “Zeng Fanzhi: Paintings, Drawings, and Two Sculptures,” fills Gagosian’s West Chelsea space with several huge nocturnal landscapes that mix abstraction and figuration, Western Expressionist influences with those of Chinese guohua painting, along with smaller paintings, drawings and cast metal sculptures in the form of jagged tree limbs.In this video, the Beijing-based artist reflects on the three years he dedicated to creating this show. He describes a strenuous painting process that begins “with things I’ve never seen before” — “if you’ve seen it,” he says, “you can’t remove yourself from it” — and that becomes “slower and stricter as it progresses,” until finally, when “you feel your heart is settled, you cast [the work] aside.” He talks about his hope that viewers will experience his sculptures in unorthodox ways. And he discusses his painstakingly thought-through design for the installation, and the effects he aimed to achieve with it.Zeng Fanhi: Paintings, Drawings, and Two Sculptures” is on view at Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street, through 6 P.M. on December 23rd.
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