 ver the last fifteen years or so, Zhong Biao has produced a body of work that is striking in the multiplicity of its images, their variety and drama reflecting the extraordinary development that China has experienced in the same time period. Often making use of dynamic charcoal lines and shading punctuated by areas of bright acrylic color, his paintings skillfully capture the mood of the times, highlighting the frantic cultural collisions engendered in a society rooted in tradition yet fascinated and often overwhelmed by change.
Born in China’s Southwest, in the crowded and chaotic metropolis of Chongqing, Zhong Biao graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of  Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Fine Arts) in the more serene lakeside city of Hangzhou. He now divides his time between his studio in Beijing, and Chongqing, where he remains Associate Professor in the Oil Painting Department in the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. This mobility and the apparently easy transitions that he makes between environments both domestic and international are reflected in the juxtapositions usually evident in his artwork. Yet it is the deeper underlying currents that really concern him. Beneath the coincidental meetings he documents, he sees an inherent order and ultimate inevitability. “Everything is pre-existent,” he states, “revealed only in passing.”
His recent large scale mixed media installations in Beijing and Shanghai have, through the use of strategically placed mirrors, film projection, and his huge paintings, enveloped the visitor in his vision of time (past, present, and future) and the causality of life’s infinite possibilities. Often, over the detailed and usually multi-figural canvases, additional framed images are painted in a trompe-l’oeil manner, some repetitions of images from elsewhere in the painting, others just empty frames, leading the viewer to question what is and what might have been.
 With a new series of works shown for the first time in April, 2009 in The Tendency of Events, a museum exhibition in Jakarta, he takes one stage further his fascination with the interrelationship of events. On a grouping of large canvases, he represents a primordial energy with random application of color forming an abstract mass out of which burst otherwise apparently unrelated and fragmentary scenes of life. The resulting images suggest more clearly the force of history and encourage the viewer towards a deeper contemplation of natural laws and truth.
Zhong Biao’s installation for Embrace! will present a continuation of this theme. In discussing his 2008 Shanghai gallery exhibition, Revelation, he commented that “the artwork and the exhibition space are like lovers; if they understand each other’s characteristics they will get along well together.” 2 It was almost as if Zhong Biao was anticipating the Denver Art Museum exhibition title and concept.
Mirage，Video3—14，5 minutes，2009
Mirage，Acroleic on canvas，4m X 18m，2009
From the left to the right：Collector Kent Logan、Patron Jean and Michael Micketti, Zhong Biao, patron Mrs. Michelle and Mr.Tom Whitten
|
