Of all the artists for whom the recent decades of rapid social evolution and development following the Cultural Revolution in China has provided a focus for critical commentary, the work of Zeng Fanzhi has become perhaps the most internationally recognized for emblemizing the conflicts inherent in a precipitously modernized society. “Every painting of mine puts forward a question,” explains the artist, “a question about men, about the course of living from birth to death…I have been committing to this aspiration, that is, to communicate all the throes of life.” Through this specialized lens, Zeng’s work examines the plight of the individual with viscerally emotional paintings which have struck a collective international chord, garnering intercontinental praise and propelling the artist to the forefront of the Chinese Contemporary art scene.

Zeng’s earliest series exhibits the anguish of his subjects by establishing scenes in macabre settings such as hospitals or butcher shops, focusing on the external and visible manifestations of pain and turmoil. After relocating to the increasingly cosmopolitan capital of Beijing in 1993, however, the artist began turning his focus increasingly inward, exploring the psychological havoc wreaked by urban alienation and anxiety. Utilizing exaggerated, surreal, and misshapen forms influenced by German Expressionism, Zeng began to reveal the emotional scarring of the individual by shielding his subjects behind the fixed expressions of staring, painted masks. Subtly and hauntingly portraying the social distress of personal disquiet ruthlessly overwhelmed by the uncontrollable tide of modernization, Zeng’s Mask series has become iconic of the underlying afflictions in current society. “The image of the mask is a theme I have worked on for several years,” Zeng reveals. “The paintings are about real people. I exaggerate and embellish the figures to emphasize the falsity of forced intimacy and laughter…

Because false faces exist, people cannot avoid the distance they create between each other. It is almost impossible to confide in each other as everyone hides their true nature, all their true desires, so that when they appear in public, the outer mask is all everyone else sees.” While the figures in these paintings screen their emotions behind the static façade of wide eyes and fixed smiles, Zeng reveals the tension and angst of his subjects in the taught, raw muscles of tightly clenched fists and stiff, defensive bearing of individuals constantly alert under the overwhelming pressure of a continually distancing culture.

Emerging from behind their painted masks, the subjects of Zeng Fanzhi’s portraits after the year 2000 exhibit a more deeply introspective nature. Departing further from realistic depictions, in these portraits Zeng moves closer to his initial Expressionist influences, utilizing garish and disconcerting colors, minimalist lines, and a greater abstraction of form to convey the piercing sentiments previously hidden by the stoically fixed smiles and unseeing eyes of his masks. With this shift towards an exploration of Expressionist aesthetics, Zeng explains, “the biggest received experience was in using line, color and form to express my response to a topic, form or emotion. I learned to utilize my emotion to produce a deep reflection upon a subject rather than making a painting that merely illustrated something.” In his new stylistic approach for reflecting individual strife, Zeng continued his exaggeration of hands and heads, the unveiled faces of his subjects now revealing naked emotions made visible by the removal of the unmoving masks. As though experiencing physical repercussions from this unshielded contact with their surroundings, Zeng renders the exposed flesh of these figures in grotesque hues of red, recalling untended wounds or raw, torn slabs of meat. Standing against blank backgrounds, the portraits emphasize both the internal and external damage of isolation and anxiety, creating a jarring focal point laden with apprehension.

A disquieting example of this series, I, WE exhibits the Expressionist aesthetic, depth of emotion, and overwhelming isolation characteristic of these portraits. Emerging from the suppressed gray wash of the canvas, the figure appears as though unfinished. Washes of blue and black merge the portrait’s lower half, blending with the gray surroundings and imbuing the subject with an ethereal spectral appearance. The lurid yellow of the figure’s shirt and jacket only serve to emphasize the unnatural redness and inflamed flesh of his face and hands, painted in swaths of varying bruised hues. One large, stray stroke carries this unsettling mixture of reds and purplish pinks up and away from the subject’s head and face, drawing him back into the flat, surrounding gray and emphasizing the surrealism of the figure, as though he were but a projection on a blank screen. The soft, blue smoke billowing gently from a casually held cigarette is echoed by the subject’s exhalation of a similar plume. Providing a cool contrast to the burning crimson of the face, the obscuring column of blue-gray smoke still reveals the naked emotion of the subject’s eyes. Enlarged and staring, the eyes in I, WE provide a stark contrast to the dead, indifferent painted views of Zeng’s masks. An arresting focal point, in this portrait Zeng has illuminated the eyes as a direct expression of the exhausting burden which emanates from the sloped shoulders and tilted, heavy head. “It is the responsibility of the artist,” Zeng once said, “to regulate the form with his spirit and to have the meanings embodied in the form, to an extent that the spirit and the form are perfectly combined and complement each other.” Within this series, I, WE artfully exhibits this combination of spirit and form, which meld to produce a strikingly distressing image of overpowering emotional depth.