Liu Zheng, “ Cinema For The Masses”

Liu Zheng ( b. 1972 - )
“ Cinema For The Masses”
Oil on canvas, signed and dated 2006
Framed.
Canvas size 38” x 51”
With Frame 40.5” x 53.75”
From the 1990s, visual images from certain periods (Mao Zedong's period to be exact), became the main source material for art creations of contemporary Chinese artists, such as political bop style art. Immediately after this, an art concept emerged that combined Mao Zedong's age, commercialization and folk culture, with language and color characteristics. It is the promotion of
"Chinesified" political bop art and is the beginning of politicization and idolization in art works.
As a member of secular art thinkers, in the latter part of the 1990's Liu Zheng created art forms such as month-brand pictures and pearl color cluster pictures. The latter shows leaders and religious figures, as well as currency patterns, which depict characteristics of the above mentioned politicization and idolization.
In recent oil paintings of Liu Zheng, this style of politicization and idolization has been further enhanced. They reproduce public images of the 1970s and the 1980s in the form of symbolization and model making public film stars. The difference with the images of the Mao era and the commercial capitalistic symbols and underlying culture in the political pop art style of a decade ago, is: no contemporary visual symbols appear in Liu Zheng's works and therefore his works have no direct cultural pertinence. They just show the cultural facts that commonly exist in contemporary Chinese art creations diversification, expansion and vacillation of source material, and this is exactly politicization. At the same time, the artists immediately painted the source material in the form of idolization. What does this kind of phenomenon explain? I think, it reflects the artists' repeated pursuit of an art ideal, after the direct criticism of political bop style cultural images, and through the exploration of Chinese folk characteristics in commercial era art.


1972 Born in Hebei, China
1992 Graduted from Hebei Normal College
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China
Solo Exhibitions
2007 ‘In our opinion’ Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam 2006 Liu Zheng works, Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Beads On Silk, Binjing Tokyo Art Projects, Tokyo, Japan 2002 Yuan, Galerie Loft, Paris, France
Group Exhibitions
2006 2004
2002
2001 1999
1998 1996
A ticket to Beijing, Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands On the Edge, Jakarta, Indonesia
Propaganda de Mao a Coca-Cola, Paris, France
Chinese Modernity, FAAP, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Paris - Pekin, Espace Cardin, Paris, France
Money and value/ The last taboo, Basel, Switzerland
Next Generation/ Art Contemporain D’Asie, Passage de Retz, Paris, France Ouh, la, la Kitsch!, TEDA Contemporary Art Museum, Tianjin, China Contemporary Chinese Art, Zurich, Switzerland