Zhou Jinhua
Different from other artists, Zhou Jinhua always brings his audience unique visual expression. Emplacing the blatant trivial sense into quite far-flung space, familiar but precipitately ludicrous, even when expressing the most ordinary streets and crowd, the artist still keeps a distance from such. No to speak of those deep visual convulsion caused by momentary violence.
In Zhou's works, it seems that the focus shifts with the direction of people's moving. In the fictitious planar space, it is the view of the audience, which turned into 360 degree extent and excurse makes the transaction between the vision and the psychology reflection. The process of the transaction caused the distance between the image and its audience, enable the imagination of connotation, therefore the audiences are able to break away from certain visual experience, feel the difference brought by the unfamiliar.
Zhou Jinhua has tried to create a sense in-between of reality and fiction by separating the ordinary trivial or momentary coincidences from the original sense, which becomes a dramatic and surreal impact. By turning the ordinary sense into unfamiliar absurdness and illusion, the artist expresses his own thoughts on the social issues and the living condition of human being. In Zhou's works, the small environment of character has been located, keeps a meaningful distance or even has no correspondence to the holistic background. The creating of two backgrounds naturally enables the audience to feel the illusion in the description of reality through a proper surreal experience. Because of the random correspondence of the front and back interspaces, Zhou has found the freedom of organizing the structure of his image. He may draw the crosswalk or the stairs of the supermarket, conduit and furniture of city randomly located, emphasizing the implication of inscape while still passes the imagination of concrete life. Even the signs of markets, beaches and lounges, are telling a certain narrative circumstance. For further observation, there are garbage hanging on his works, and this kind of converse metaphor is coherent with his concept of strangeness out of the familiar, heterogeneity out of the reality status, as well as the drama out of momentary outbreaks.
We can tell that the artist has been keeping independent way of thinking, as well as paying attention and to those people from lower lever and from the fringe area of the society. Also he expresses his concern about the public contradictions and other potential uncertainties, which is possible related to the personal life experience of the artist.
Sichuan academy of fine arts located at "Huangjiaoping", where the artist is living, which is a place of disorder, obstreperous and even filthy congested, meanwhile is abundant of different live modalities. When people come to the neighborhood, the feeling from Zhou's works becomes real: dust and trash is part of life. As for the artist, after graduated, he went to Shenzhen and experienced the changes of geography, environment and surroundings. As contradiction, when Zhou was reconsidering that place he used to be familiar with, he felt unspeakable anxiety and uncertainty. All those characters on the screen that come out of nowhere, disordered, aimless, no one can tell where they are going to. The abruptness but ordinary expression, particularity of the story, along with the background of far-flung space, is so much unexpected but completely predictable.
All of these are embodied by the artist's acuminous awareness and serious reflecting of living condition and life experience. Indeed, as a younger artist as Zhou has been, the searching has just been started.
1978
Born in Deyang, Sichuan, China
2002
Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, Chongqing, China
Now lives and works in Beijing, China
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2011
Fate•Zhou Jinhua Solo Exhibition, Schoeni Gallery, Hong Kong
2010
Absurd Reality•Zhou Jinhua Solo Exhibition, Gallery 100, Taiwan
Zhou Jinhua, Neuffer am Park Art Museum，Pirmasens, Germany
2009
We Are All Fine, but....., Zhou Jinhua Solo Exhibition, kunstverein Konstanz Museum, Konstanz ,Germany
Equality of All Substances, Beijing Kongjian Gallery, Beijing, China
2008
Constancy•Inconstancy, Shi Tang Alternative Space, Beijing, China
2007
No Sound Nor Movement•Zhou Jinhua solo exhibition, Hong Kong
2005
Us - Zhou Jinhua solo exhibition , Hong Kong
No Sound Nor Movement•Zhou Jinhua solo exhibition, Hong Kong
2003
Zhou Jinhua unlimited force contemporary arts annual exhibition, Boya gallery, Shenzhen, China
Selected Group Exhibitions
2013
Dreamy Reality(solo), Nou Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
2012
LATITUDE/ATTITUDE: 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
ATTITUDE: 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery and Parkview Green Gallery, Beijing, China
2011
SH Contemporary Art Fair 2011, by Soemo Fine Arts, Beijing, China
2008
All is Possible•Works by Chinese Artists, Luxembourg and Germany
New Generations•Chinese Youth Artists' Works Exhibition, Schoeni Gallery, Hong Kong
2007
Passion•Contemporary Art Exhibition, Soemo Fine Arts, Songzhuang, Beijing, China
Encountering Paintings·Works of 10 Artists, China Art Museum, Beijing, China
your view, my story, The Ministry of Art, Pferdestaelle des Postfuhramtes, Berlin, Germany
The Observer, Schoeni Gallery, Hong Kong
Own Form-own Style, Tank Loft, Chongqing, China
China International Gallery Exposition, Art Fair, Beijing, China
Art is a kind of Work, Shanghai Sculpture Art Center, Shanghai, China
Look Up-Look Down, Gallery Beijing Space, Beijing, China
Start from Southwest, Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou, China
Generation suess-sauer•Chinas neue Kuenstler, Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany
Outstanding Art Prize, Hong Kong
2006
New Talents of Chinese Oil Works•Part Six, Danish Cultural Arts Center, Beijing, China
China International Gallery Exposition, Art Fair, Beijing, China
Shanghai Art Fair 2006, Shanghai, China
Guangzhou Art Fair, Guangzhou, China
Art Walk, Schoeni Gallery, Hong Kong
The first Beijing Art Invest and Collect Exhibition, Beijing, China
2005
One's Character is changeless, Shenzhen, China
Southern life, Kunming Loft, Kunming, China
1st Poetry and Fine Arts Exhibition, Shenzhen, China
2004
Non-Painting•Four Artists Exhibition, Dong Daming Art Center, Shanghai, China
Schoeni and Chinese Artists' Works Exhibition, Schoeni Gallery, Hong Kong
Track•Sino-Korean Art Exhibition, Chongqing, China
Automatic Shopping Machine, Suzhou Art and Design Technology Institute, Suzhou, China
2003
National Outstanding Graduates Oil Painting Exhibition, Hexiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
1+1 - Two Artists Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery, Beijing, China
Exceeding Imagination, Boya Gallery, Shenzhen, China
2001
Curated and Participated "Emulsification Experiment Art Exhibition", Chongqing, China