LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Zheng Chongbin: Golden State, which spotlights artist Zheng Chongbin’s explorations of water, light, movement, and California’s natural landscape. Zheng Chongbin: Golden State marks the artist’s largest solo presentation in the U.S. to date and the first major showcase of his work with colored pigments.
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Over the past four decades, Zheng has cultivated a unique practice that engages the driving concepts and aesthetics of the L.A.-based Light and Space movement alongside East Asia’s tradition of ink painting, fusing seemingly disparate practices into signature painting and video techniques. He has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 30 years and draws inspiration from the region’s distinctive atmosphere, environmental effects, and rich ecologies. Where previous presentations have contextualized his practice in the canon of Chinese ink painting alone, LACMA’s exhibition situates Zheng as a distinctly Californian artist.
Centered around video installation works Chimeric Landscape (2015) and Mesh (2018), Zheng Chongbin: Golden State presents paintings and prints from LACMA’s permanent collection alongside new large-scale pieces created specifically for the exhibition. These include the show’s title work, Golden State (2024), and Untitled (2024), both experiments in Zheng’s signature technique combining ink and acrylic paint in geometric, abstract collages. The exhibition also features four works from LACMA’s Fondation INK Collection that will be on view for the first time.
“Light, space, and nature are fundamental agents in Zheng’s works that aren’t always at the forefront of discussions surrounding his art,” said Susanna Ferrell, Wynn Resorts Associate Curator of Chinese Art at LACMA. “By emphasizing Zheng’s synthesis of techniques, materials, and influences, this exhibition offers visitors new ways to connect with his expansive, experimental practice.”
“Zheng Chongbin: Golden State is part of our ongoing commitment to present works by living Californian artists and to expand our region’s art historical narratives,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “Thanks in great part to the generosity of the Fondation INK, LACMA’s collection of Chinese and Chinese diasporic contemporary art continues to grow in support of new exhibitions and scholarship.”
Over the course of two rotations, the exhibition will bring together 15 works including:
Chimeric Landscape (2024), the exhibition’s central video work, is a collection of images that embody the flow of nature. Featuring footage of algorithmic systems, running ink, and blood vessels, Zheng draws connections between the wave-like or fractal movements of energy in discrete structures. Chimeric Landscape tracks the life and agency of these substances as they move and change of their own accord.
In 2023, Zheng began incorporating colorful mineral pigments into his paintings—the first use of color in his compositions in roughly 30 years. Created specifically for LACMA’s exhibition, Golden State (2024) is at once a close-up study of Californian light and an abstracted view of the state’s shape. The piece’s sharp lines and fragmented forms, cut and collaged together, are inspired by the visible fault lines, rock strata, and forest fires that physically striate the state. Zheng emulates the chaotic energy, destruction, and regeneration of California’s landscape, with torn paper edges and a high-contrast collage technique.
Inspired by frescoes painted by 18th-century Italian artist Giambattista Tiepolo, The Poetry of Receding Continents (2024) is a study of dramatic tones, shades, and tints that evoke the interplay of light and shadow. The work incorporates iridescent paper layered with vibrant, sweeping gradients of color, creating a dynamic visual experience as planes recede and shift in response to the viewer’s movement. The print was created as part of Zheng’s ongoing collaboration with Kathryn Kain of Atelier Blu Rose, a printmaking studio in Northern California.
A masterwork in Zheng’s oeuvre, Six Canons (2012) relates contemporary abstract aesthetics to the longstanding tradition of Chinese ink painting. The piece is an essential point of convergence for the exhibition, connecting Zheng’s earlier ink painting practice to newer works, and demonstrating the range of his technical ability.
Turbulence (2013) typifies the exploratory energy that drives Zheng’s practice. By mixing brilliant white acrylic paint with traditional black ink, the artist achieved soft, textured grays that alternate between matte and reflective. The undulating effect of his materials lends the composition a topographic quality that resembles an aerial photograph of burning rivers or a cracked, icy tundra. Turbulence was the first work by Zheng to enter LACMA’s collection.
Zheng Chongbin was born in Shanghai, China, and educated as a classical Chinese figurative painter at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Acclaimed as one of China’s preeminent young experimental ink painters in the 1980s, he mounted his first solo exhibition at the Shanghai Museum of Art in 1988. In 1989, he received the first international fellowship from the San Francisco Art Institute to study installation, performance, and conceptual art, receiving his MFA in 1991. In addition to LACMA, Zheng’s work can be found in the collections of the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Orange County Museum of Art, M+ in Hong Kong, the Daimler Art Collection in Germany, the DSL Collection in France, and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, among others.
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