Liu Zheng 2008
May 15, 2008 - June 7, 2008
Reception: May 15, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

798 Avant Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of Liu Zheng’s highly acclaimed photographic series “The Chinese”. Often drawing comparisons to the epic photographic undertakings of August Sander and Diane Arbus, Liu Zheng’s photographic work in “The Chinese” offers a powerful representation of the human condition at the fringes of Chinese society. Shot over an eight year period (1994-2002), “The Chinese” embodies tremendous emotional force set against a profoundly Chinese context.

Born in Wuqiang County and raised in the mining town of Datong, in North China, Liu Zheng’s first encounter with art was in the production of Chinese New Year paintings. Despite Liu Zheng’s affinity for painting his parents were strongly against there son pursuing a career as an artist. On a fluke opportunity Liu Zheng enrolled in a rudimentary photography class in University and immediately new he’d found his medium. In 1991 he began work as a photo journalist for the Worker’s Daily. In 1997, under intense personal pressure to pursue his own artistic ambitions, he gave up his position as a photojournalist, returned his cameras and forfeited his salary. The decision both broke him financially and freed him of his obligations as a photographer of the state.

“With astonishingly condensed visual force, Liu Zheng’s photographs bring home the ways that the ambivalent heritage of China’s past survives in the twenty-first century, suddenly surfacing in the guise of everyday tragedy or absurdity.”

-Christopher Phillips, Director of the Independent Center of Photography, from Liu Zheng, “The Chinese”.

798 Avant Gallery
511 W 25th St, #502
New York, NY
http://www.798avantgallery.com/