Zeng Hao
Spaces, domestic interiors and urban centers alike, are deconstructed, spread apart, and modified in the paintings of Beijing-based artist Zeng Hao. These works are readily identifiable by their vast openness and blank, monochromatic backgrounds, upon which the elements of an apartment, living room, or bedroom drift and float. Abandoning systems of perspective, Zeng sparingly populates his compositions with domestic objects: a hanging lamp, a shrunken couch, and variously sized bottles, books, plants, and tables. A human subject often appears adrift in these distorted spaces, but the overall effect refuses any sort of narrative. Zeng’s frank handling of these fractured, thing-based landscapes suggests the individual’s total submergence in commodity goods in China—and offers viewers terms to critique this rampant consumerism. Since the mid-2000s, however, Zeng has shifted the focus of his work, painting outdoor urban scenery, signs, airports, and planes.
Zeng explains his work by stating, “I attempt to give a narrative of the social situation I live in. It's both a real space and a psychological one. I create a kind of solemn scenery of unexpected realization and thus experience the relationship between space and people, space and materials, people and objects, objects and objects in this way.”
Zeng has …
Spaces, domestic interiors and urban centers alike, are deconstructed, spread apart, and modified in the paintings of Beijing-based artist Zeng Hao. These works are readily identifiable by their vast openness and blank, monochromatic backgrounds, upon which the elements of an apartment, living room, or bedroom drift and float. Abandoning systems of perspective, Zeng sparingly populates his compositions with domestic objects: a hanging lamp, a shrunken couch, and variously sized bottles, books, plants, and tables. A human subject often appears adrift in these distorted spaces, but the overall effect refuses any sort of narrative. Zeng’s frank handling of these fractured, thing-based landscapes suggests the individual’s total submergence in commodity goods in China—and offers viewers terms to critique this rampant consumerism. Since the mid-2000s, however, Zeng has shifted the focus of his work, painting outdoor urban scenery, signs, airports, and planes.
Zeng explains his work by stating, “I attempt to give a narrative of the social situation I live in. It's both a real space and a psychological one. I create a kind of solemn scenery of unexpected realization and thus experience the relationship between space and people, space and materials, people and objects, objects and objects in this way.”
Zeng has exhibited at the National Art Gallery in Beijing, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, the Indonesian National Gallery in Jakarta, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Marseille, and the São Paulo Biennial, among other institutions.