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Ut supra, sic infra. As above, so under. That is the ethos of Zheng Chongbin’s design philosophy. Based mostly in San Francisco’s Bay Space, Chongbin creates work by layering swaths of ink and paint upon each other, reworking canvases into topographic components. He lets his canvases breathe; he lets them react naturally to the paint—his work is peeling, pitting, cracking, seeping into the canvas. His work bear likeness to pure formations from mountain peaks, riverbeds and fault traces to blood capillaries, pores and skin matrices and synapses. They bear witness to the viewer as a lot because the viewer does to them. Chongbin moreover embraces the entropic actions of the paint upon the canvas and, in doing so, instills his work with an interiority that, though invisible to the viewer, is instinctually felt by them.
By his holistic observe spanning portray, light-and-space set up and digital media, Chongbin has graphed ecologies and vitality throughout his work, muddling our notion of sentience and life. In “Zheng Chongbin: Golden State,” his solo exhibition at LACMA, he casts his eye upon California’s expansive geography. Comprising the artist’s earlier works alongside newer choices, the exhibition is a scientific symphony of picture and composition that privileges expertise and temporality over didactic interpretation.
“It’s an setting I’m coping with. It’s a dwelling factor,” Chongbin informed Observer, explaining how his observe revolves across the distinctive, natural high quality behind every topic. “My sensibility—in extension to [art]—is it appears like part of your physique… not within the conventional manner, however the ordinary manner, in a manner that you simply work together along with your physique extensions. And so you’re feeling like coping with and collaborating with dwelling issues… You’re not the protagonist. You’re truly facilitating what occurs.”
Born in Shanghai in 1961, Chongbin was introduced up throughout China’s Cultural Revolution and thus educated in classical Chinese language artwork kinds, notably throughout the ink custom. In 1978, China’s Open Door Coverage allowed an inflow of Western concepts, supplies and artwork kinds that had beforehand been forbidden. Amongst these Western artwork traditions, Chongbin was most affected by Summary Expressionism, German Expressionism and the Mild and Area actions, together with particular artists such because the visceral figuration of Francis Bacon, the conceptual installations of Robert Irwin and the sculptural types of Larry Bell.
These inspirations are simply perceptible in Chongbin’s work, which shares a visible kinship with fashionable Western artwork actions whereas sustaining dialogue with the ink traditions wherein he was classically educated. On this vein, Chongbin deliberately grants his work its personal psychology, permitting artwork to have its personal inside world that extends past himself, the peripheries of artwork actions and the borders of nations, and as a substitute arrives immediately in entrance of the viewers, whomever and wherever they’re. His bodily observe, in fact, displays this dynamic—his closing items, no matter medium, are sometimes beset with texture and kineticism. They share a palpable lifeblood.
One in all Chongbin’s few work to make the most of coloration, Golden State (2024), with its vivid yellow swaths of coloration, by strokes of black, grey and white, represents the extraordinary daylight of California, banded with belts of bushes, rain fog, hearth scars and earthquake fault traces. For this portray, Chongbin selected to color on shrimp paper, a lightweight materials constructed from the bark of sandalwood, and in doing so gave Golden State a novel, breathable high quality. Chongbin offers his supplies company, permitting the paint to crack and fissure as new layers are utilized whereas nonetheless sustaining its daring presence and—within the case of Golden State—its good coloration.
“It appears like ecologies,” Chongbin stated, recalling the impact of the paint penetrating microfibers, coursing coloration by way of the paper’s delicate veins. “All the pieces [that goes] by way of is my pores and skin… issues not solely occur on the highest, but additionally occur in the midst of house [and] into the opposite aspect. It’s very a lot a dwelling organism. The house adjustments and the floor turns into an area… You could have this type of indexical hint of the basic methodology of the work.”
Although, as famous, Chongbin not often paints with coloration, his work are sometimes in dialogue with each other, not solely in type and context however in composition as nicely. Turbulence (2013) and Golden State are operational foils of each other. Whereas Golden State primarily appears to the skies of California, reproducing its dappled daylight by way of components of nature, Turbulence appears to the earth; its bands of black paint, puddled by numerous ink blots, resemble mountain basins, rocky ridges, igneous extrusions and cooling magma. Each work, in addition to most of Chongbin’s work, take into account the spatial expertise of the setting. Each are monumental items, climbing eight, 9 or ten ft excessive, enveloping the viewer within the sublimity of their ecologies.
“I at all times discover… what’s occurred on the floor [and] what’s occurred beneath,” Chongbin stated. “All of these daring traces are a solid of what’s occurring beneath. The water is definitely like dashing down by way of the themes, by way of the slope and goes beneath and pushes out. I wish to instantiate nature reasonably than depicting it.”
Chongbin regaled us with tales of his adventures on climbing trails within the foothills of Marin County and wandering the steely seashores of Northern California. He noticed “the useless issues come alive.” His set up, Chimeric Panorama (2015), was impressed by one such encounter. Chongbin described a sand greenback awash on the shore and seeing a mess of lifeways. He remarked with surprise on the creature’s iridescence because it shimmered within the daylight. He marveled at its respiration—its “thousands and thousands of little lights flickering” because the sand greenback’s velvety matrix of pores undulated gently.
With Chimeric Panorama, he weaves brief clips of water, ink, cell capabilities and different ephemera into Euclidean geometries that twine and break solely to reform once more. The set up celebrates the little breaths of life that these inanimate objects take whereas deconstructing their spatial differentiation. “The construction of Chimeric Panorama is clearly a non-linear narrative,” he defined. “The one visible dominance that we encounter is the ink movement, it’s used because the image of the water, however water is mirrored in loads of the formations and the rising qualities that I believe are important components for the whole lot—our our bodies and the earth.”
This pure essence echoes all through the work within the LACMA present, invoking atmospheres that vary from the monumental to the microscopic. Whether or not establishing a cosmos out of ephemera or a simulacrum out of geographies, Chongbin locations equal emphasis—equal significance—on his artwork and his viewer. He collaborates with each materials and thoughts, permitting one to tell the opposite, guaranteeing that what lies above displays under.
“Zheng Chongbin: Golden State” is on view in LACMA by way of January 4, 2026.
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