ZHU Ming

 

ZHU Ming, China

 

Born in 1972, lives and works in Beijing.

Zhu Ming who was born in Changsa the capital of Hunan province, is with no doubt one of the most important contemporary artists in China today. Belonging to a generation of artists that sprang out of the experimental context of Beijing’s East Village in the early 1990’s, Zhu has continued to strive for an art true to itself, and true in itself.

His work which is both poetic and conceptual takes as its point of departure the image of one person (or sometimes several people) that are inside a semi-transparent inflated plastic sphere. An original and one is tempted to say both archaic and iconic image from which Zhu develops a highly visual work with an ever growing number of layers, significations, contexts, and actions.

A point of departure from which everything is possible. He have stated that he ”sees the bubbles, which exist and quickly disappear, as a metaphor for life, from one generation to another”. Of course other associations comes to mind whether it concerns a pre-natal state, human alienation or for that matter the ephemeral. It is also an image of a containment, of a state where the indvidual is looked upon from the outside, accentuating an inside-outside relationship to the world and to society.


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Zhu Ming. 9 March 2003. (detail of photograph). Performance realized In the framework of Liquid Sea, Contemporary Art Museum of Sydney, Australia.