{"id":2074,"date":"2025-08-08T20:11:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T12:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/?post_type=text&p=2074"},"modified":"2025-08-08T20:43:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T12:43:04","slug":"zhouzixi-artforumcaifang","status":"publish","type":"text","link":"https:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/en\/text\/zhouzixi-artforumcaifang\/","title":{"rendered":"An Artforum Interview with Zhou Zixi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zhou Zixi on His Painting and Exhibition<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Zhou Zixi\u2019s solo exhibition at the Shanghai Baolong Art Museum \u2014 The Longing Evoked from Afar Is Not a Call Toward the Unknown, but a Summons to Return Home \u2014 features more than seventy works that trace nearly two decades of the artist\u2019s practice, revealing multiple layers shaped by different historical contexts since the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

Rather than following a chronological order, the exhibition unfolds across five chapters \u2014 Childhood, Landscape, Dwelling, Dream, and The Tilt of the Standing Pillar \u2014 like fragments of memory flashing unpredictably, forming a kind of \u201cnatural montage.\u201d One might even imagine the entire exhibition as a single artwork, through which we glimpse the emotions, attitudes, bitterness, and absurdity that Zhou has long guarded. In this conversation, Zhou shares the origins of his practice, the conception of this exhibition, and his understanding of painting.<\/p>\n

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After Noon 02\uff0c2021\uff0cOil on canvas\uff0c150 x 220 cm<\/em><\/p>\n

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I first studied Chinese literature, entering university in 1988. One summer in my second year, I happened to visit a friend\u2019s studio and joined them in painting. A month later, I found it so fascinating that by the end of August I had submitted my withdrawal letter and switched to art. Three years later, I was admitted to the Art Department at East China Normal University. I studied there for two years, but was expelled for cheating in an exam.<\/p>\n

In my creative journey, there were two pivotal moments.The first was entering East China Normal University, which gave me many opportunities to encounter contemporary art. By my sophomore year, I attempted my first performance work. In the summer of 1993, I was inspired by a performance by artist Zhu Fadong in Kunming \u2014 he had posted \u201cmissing person\u201d notices for himself in both Beijing and Kunming. I felt the idea could be pushed further, so when the new semester began I invited four classmates to join me. Each day on campus we posted a missing-person notice for one of them. On the sixth day, we posted a notice in the name of our class searching for all five. A week later, we forged a court announcement declaring them missing, followed by a school notice expelling them for long-term absenteeism, and finally a notice stating that their search would be discontinued. The work drew intense pressure and threats from the school administration, which ironically matched the very premise we had set out to explore. It was one of my earliest expressions of the themes that still interest me today.<\/p>\n

The second moment came in 1997, when Xu Zhen and I were renting in an urban village on the outskirts of Shanghai. When Yang Fudong came to the city, he stayed with me for a while. One day, he casually painted a landscape sketch that moved me deeply \u2014 that painting still hangs in my home. My exchanges with them at the time were hugely influential. Later, my experiments in photography and installation helped me gradually move beyond a purely painterly lens for thinking about painting. In other words, I began to see a work first as an artwork, and only then as a painting.<\/p>\n

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Zhou Zixi\uff0c\u201cThe Longing the Distant Worlds Aroused Spoke More to the Home Than to Anything Unknown\u201d\uff0cExhibition site\uff0c2021<\/em><\/p>\n

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People often joke that I am a \u201chalf-amateur\u201d painter, because I never finished university and never mastered the academic painter\u2019s language. But I have little interest in the formal language or technique of painting \u2014 for me, expression comes first. By expression, I don\u2019t mean that I have an idea or a theory to communicate, but rather that I have many feelings I cannot put into words, and so I choose painting as the vehicle. The key question is whether your emotions \u2014 your perceptions, anger, or joy \u2014 are fully present on the canvas. For me, technique only matters insofar as it can render this fullness. Whether the approach is traditional or modern, academic or non-academic, is irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Of course, looking back after so many years, I see that I may have developed my own language, one that is distinct from both the academic mainstream and current trends. When I stand before a canvas, my only aim is to paint it until I find it beautiful. Naturally, what I find beautiful may not appeal to others, but my own sense of beauty is enough. I often think: what is the most a good painter can do? At best, to expand the boundaries of aesthetic possibility. That is my own aspiration.<\/p>\n

For this exhibition, curator Lu Mingjun selected several dozen works from over eight hundred, breaking them apart and recombining them. Although this logic differs from my own, it allowed me to see my work from another perspective and offered me new insights. The title of the exhibition comes from a short piece in Walter Benjamin\u2019s Berlin Childhood around 1900. The word \u201chome\u201d in the title can certainly refer to family, hometown, or childhood in a literal sense, but I personally prefer to understand it in spiritual terms \u2014 as a \u201cspiritual home\u201d or, one might say, an \u201cother shore.\u201d In truth, all forms of creation \u2014 literature, music, painting \u2014 may at their core be the pursuit of some kind of other shore or homeland.<\/p>\n

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Xiaogang Grotto murals 029\uff0c2021\uff0cOil on canvas\uff0c60 x 80cm<\/em><\/p>\n

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Most people who have seen my paintings feel that I depict suffering \u2014 even my landscapes seem imbued with melancholy. More than twenty years ago, friends advised me not to always paint in such a grim and solemn tone, but I feel comfortable only this way. Beyond that, I must admit I harbor deep concern for the world today. I often feel tense and uneasy, and I need to process these feelings \u2014 painting is one way I think through them, as well as a way to vent and release.<\/p>\n

I have long been interested in history, politics, and literature, and looking at human civilization as a whole, the picture is largely pessimistic. I have always believed in the saying, \u201cAn individual\u2019s suffering is the suffering of all humankind.\u201d It may sound exaggerated, but it is in fact very real. If one person\u2019s suffering remains unresolved, then logically the suffering of humanity remains unresolved \u2014 they are always connected.<\/p>\n

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Interview by Li Suchao<\/em>
\nSource: Artforum China<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","text_category":[],"class_list":["post-2074","text","type-text","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/text\/2074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/text"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/text"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"text_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zhouzixi.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/text_category?post=2074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}