Furong Zhang

About

American   —   I was born and raised in Shanghai, China during the Cultural Revolution. In 1989 I was part of the controversial first China Avant-Garde art show at Beijing's National Fine Art Museum. I also participated in many exhibitions held at the Beijing and Shanghai Fine Art Museums. I attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1989, and immigrated to America. Since then I have lived in New York City and central Pennsylvania. Recently I have exhibited at various spaces and museums in Brooklyn, Miami, Shanghai, and Tokyo. My paintings deal with my memories and experiences of dual histories, one of my native country, China, during the Cultural Revolution, and the other of my subsequent journey in America, where I currently reside. I am interested in the dynamics between exterior systems and inner dialogue, material person and soul, high and low culture, and other conflicting yet coexisting elements. Certain images, such as ones rooted in construction, detritus, ritual, subtle violence, and ambivalence are a way to reference the social effects of multiple cultures and changes associated with economic development and industrialization, yet also act as metaphors for an individual experience. I pull from my archive of images, taken from my own photographs, and synthesize the separate components into a new “reality” in an ambiguous space. Each painting is a build up of moments from an individual narrative into a constructed whole, after my slow digestion of collective histories.