China's scorched environment inspires artist Zeng

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SHANGHAI: In Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi's new show in Shanghai, massive scorched landscapes -- his largest-ever paintings -- hang close, forcing visitors to come face-to-face with the white hot flames.

The 10-metre-long canvasses are central to the exhibition by Zeng -- who holds the auction sale record for a contemporary artist from China -- which he hopes will draw attention to ecological degradation in the vast nation.

"The idea that links these works is environmental protection," Zeng told reporters at the Rockbund Art Museum, where the exhibition is being staged.

"I am 46 years old and I experienced the most drastic changes in China as I grew up," said Zeng.

Zeng was born in the central city of Wuhan -- known for oven-like heat, thick smog and heavily polluted bodies of water. In recent years, workers have skimmed tens of thousands of kilogrammes of dead fish from its lakes.

His paintings are known for their psychological tension, most famously seen in his "Mask" series of urban figures wearing white masks -- one of which sold for a record 9.7 million dollars in May 2008.

"His work is very physical and very psychological. Of all Chinese painters, he is very unique in bringing all these things together," said Wu Hung, head of the University of Chicago’s Centre for the Art of East Asia and curator of the exhibition.

A smaller scorched landscape by Zeng fetched 60,000 dollars at an April environmental charity auction at Christie's in New York, which featured works by Britain’s Damien Hirst, Denmark’s Olafur Eliasson and other leading artists.

As visitors move through the exhibition, wolves, hyenas, and monkeys appear behind the twisted branches of his landscapes, "staring at the viewer as if they have something to tell us," Wu said.

Zeng said he visited nature reserves in China to observe species such as the golden monkey which are on the verge of extinction.

Two giant mammoth tusks carved from wood -- parts of Zeng's first experiments with sculpture -- hang suspended in the museum’s top floor atrium, the absent body suggesting the tragedy of great beasts gone forever, Wu said.

The exhibition's first wood sculpture is a lamb partially covered by a sheet. For the final sculpture, visitors must leave the museum and enter the adjacent Union Chapel on Shanghai’s iconic Bund riverfront.

In the centre of the church is a wood sculpture of a person cradling a limp body, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s "Pieta", but all is concealed beneath the folds of a sheet.

Sunlight streams through the chapel's stained glass windows on which Zeng has reproduced some of his paintings.

"Here is really the coda," Wu said. "People come here to find some kind of revelation -- it's surrounded with colours, the paintings, the sculpture."

The final installation seems to suggest ruining the environment is taking a toll on the soul of China, but Zeng played down its religious significance, in a nation where the ruling Communists restrict independent worship.

"I'm not a religious person -- that's why I looked at it from an art history perspective. I only created based on my personal life experience," Zeng said.

But the work is spiritual, Wu said.

"The Shanghai government, they can also understand the subtle difference. Everyone has a spirit, everyone has a soul and art really has to reach people’s spirit," Wu said.

For ordinary Chinese, environmental discussion is driven mostly by immediate concerns such as clean water and safe food, rather than climate change or saving the planet, according to experts.

But work by artists such as Zeng is helping broaden the debate.

"Chinese artists are very plugged into the zeitgeist," Karen Smith, a Beijing-based curator and art writer, said.

Other artists have explored this theme -- Ai Weiwei through his use of recycled materials, Liu Xiaodong in monumental paintings of the Three Gorges Dam and Liu Wei with moving work on environmental destruction, Smith said.

But until now most artists had been pursuing their personal interests rather than a wider environmental agenda, she said.

"Given the general growth in discussion of the problems of environment in China, and that artists like Zeng Fanzhi come from provincial areas where the problems are most apparent, they will be more sensitive to these issues," Smith said.

The solo exhibition "2010 Zeng Fanzhi" runs until October 12.