artist profile
Zhu Wei
born
1966
lives and works
Beijing, China
education
People’s Liberation Army Academy of Arts, Beijing, China, 1989
Beijing Academy of Film, Beijing, China, 1993
about the artist
One of the most important contemporary practitioners of the classical Chinese medium of ink and wash, Zhu Wei ensnares both the old and the new in his imagery. Armed with a humorous sensibility shaped by a significant stint in the People’s Liberation Army, a thorough passion for Chinese rock’n’roll, and an exceptional facility at invoking antiquity, Zhu paints his own unique picture of present-day China. Reserved, reverent members of modern society who do not speak are juxtaposed against charged, coded landscapes of old that do. A quiet political commentary is ciphered into his compositions and configurations, a function of a childhood spent in a revolutionary past and an adulthood witnessing a drastically changing present. The artist has held solo exhibitions in China, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Belgium, Hong Kong, and the United States. His work has been included in group shows across China—at spaces such as the Today Art Museum in Beijing, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, and the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou—and abroad, at the National Art Gallery in Athens, Greece, and the Museum Belvue in Brussels, Belgium.
Website: http://www.zhuweiartden.com