Zeng Fanzhi: Catalogue Raisonné

The Fanzhi Foundation is delighted to announce the commencement of the Zeng Fanzhi Catalogue Raisonn Project. It is a landmark publication systematically incorporating records from the studio, dealers, auction houses, museums, collectors and any other possible sources to compile by far the most comprehensive record of the artist's oevure, written as is appropriate to international scholarly methodology.

This catalogue illustrates chronologically every confirmed work, inclusive of all media by the artist, with a time span from 1980s to 2015, for the first time presenting the entire oeuvre of Zeng Fanzhi in the past 30 years. For each singular work, there is comprehensive information including detailed description, inscription, provenance, background, preparatory studies, documentary photographs, literature and exhibition records, as well as any associated primary archival documents that has never been published ever before.

It offers collectors and researchers a new privileged point of view and a most sought-after independent reference to understand the artist and the Asian contemporary art scene he is rooted at.

With over 450 color illustrations and documentary photographs across 500 pages for volume one, edited by Gladys Chung, detailing the complete oeuvre of his most acclaimed Hospital and Meat Series and Mask Series combined with a lengthy timeline, never published photographs, scholarly written essays, extensive bibliography and worldwide exhibition history.

Being one of the most concerned living Chinese contemporary artists, Zeng Fanzhi won his international acclaims first by Hospital and Meat Series and later on the Mask Series already in the 1990s. Hospital and Meat Series strikes spectators with his strongly expressive brushwork and significant mastery and bold application of meat-like red color hue. It provides us strong insights to interrogate into the state of human existence, their agonies, their vulnerable condition and possible redemption, deemed to provide a universal resonance across different cultures. Mask Series possesses the same creative ambition to both touch the hearts of the world and the Chinese. It was created in conjunction with the economic reform and open up of China in the 1990s. It was a head time with China and its people experiencing much dramatic changes in its socio-cultural milieu and uncertainty. Doctrine, pursuits and beliefs once dominating people life gave way to a completely new commercial social rule, hence uncertainty, hypocrisy, vulnerable state, alienation and disguised persona arise. Zeng strikes to create a group of masked protagonist in cosmopolitan suit to interrogate their possible mentality and unique state of existence. Underneath the unique subject matters and images he developed, the artist commences simultaneously a long aesthetic exploration about expressiveness of line, colors and forms and how these formal elements conveys to human emotion and their state of mind - for this universal concern prevailing the world history of art, Zeng provides his unique answers and inspiring thoughts which make him unquestionable a prominent artist in history of contemporary art, Asian and Worldwide.

Zeng Fanzhi has won international acclaims first for the Hospital and Meat series and later on for the Mask series in the 1990s. Gladys Chung is an art specialist and consultant working in Asian art for the past ten years at Christie’s, Poly Auctions, and others, previously giving lectures at several universities in Hong Kong. Currently, she is director for the Fanzhi Foundation for Art and Education, in charge of the current Catalogue Raisonne Project.