Zheng Guogu
APT9
Born 1970 Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, China
Lives and works in Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, China
A presence in Chinese art since the 1990s, Zheng Guogu has consistently focused on the relationship between images and individual consciousness. First known for his conceptual provocations inspired by China’s exploding consumer culture, Zheng Guogu uses painting as the medium through which he reflects on his immersive study of Chinese spirituality. Drawing on the visual language of traditional Buddhist thangka painting, he seeks out colour frequencies whose vibration is closely related to the workings of human arteries and veins. His paintings are an attempt to extract the essence of what the artist describes as the ‘classic multimedia power’ of thangka, using it as a template for the colours and images manifesting from his studies of energy.
Zheng Guogu’s studies of qi inform his visually striking paintings from the ‘Visionary Transformation’ series – qi being the fundamental life force or energy flow of traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts. Zheng’s paintings feature geometric and iconographic elements derived from Tibetan Buddhist thangka painting, but are distinguished by their searing colour scheme of synthetic-looking hues and layered imagery. The series exploits what the artist describes as the ‘classic multimedia power’ of thangka, and its capacity to act on a spiritual and even physical level.
To create these works, Zheng combines several visual elements using a computer and prints the composite image onto canvas, which he then overpaints with oils by hand. The artist ensures an even greater visual intensity through the painstaking application of small globules of paint using syringes, a method that constructs the image as an arrangement of cells and overlaid patterns, generating vigorous optical effects. Zheng uses these techniques as he believes their visual frequencies correspond to the rhythms of the body’s meridian system – the path through which qi flows.
