Zheng Zhou
Seeking Traces
Mar 24 – May 23, 2025
Opening: Monday, Mar 23, 6pm – 8pm
The gallery is pleased to present at its Hong Kong space Seeking Traces, an exhibition of recent paintings by Zheng Zhou.
Zheng Zhou’s 2024 exhibition Spanish Grilled Fish at Kiang Malingue’s Hong Kong space continued the artist’s fascination with multifaceted, uncanny characters: his figures appear blurred, often rendered as simplified silhouettes, while layers of colour, decidedly saturated or subtly muted, weave these ethereal characters into profoundly alluring, vibrant environments. The current exhibition showcases the artist’s radical shift towards abstraction in recent years: rectangular colour blocks emerge irregularly as a recurring motif across multiple works, charting elementary chromatic networks through vibrant or deep hues like titanium white, scarlet, violet, and cobalt blue. In this new series, the mystifying narratives found in Zheng Zhou’s previous works give way to unrestrained rhythms: sweeping colour blocks cover the canvas like billowing brocade, producing a visual experience that is intricately layered and variegated.
The diptych Spring in the south (2025) is exemplary of Zheng Zhou’s recent shift toward abstraction: The large-scale canvas is fragmented into multiple loose clusters by minute, vibrant colour blocks, dispelling any coherent narrative formed by human movement, natural landscapes, or light and shadow. Instead, the organic play of stacked colour blocks builds a delicate and enthralling labyrinth. The seemingly flat space is guided by multiple threads of purple and green, revealing an immense constellation of compositional potentials. The triptych Seeking traces among the deep blossoms (2025) further employs colour as space: colours become each other’s frames or screens; parallel strokes of wild brushwork stabilise precarious gravitational relationships; a few hastily sketched figures once again hint at incorporating milieus of uncanny depth—amidst the interplay of intrepid and tenuous strokes, Zheng Zhou’s compositions invite viewers to seek traces and lose themselves within.
Works such as Secret passage to hidden depths (2025) and A boy (2025) are reminiscent of Zheng Zhou’s iconic landscape paintings, focusing on an isolated figure that is on the verge of becoming indistinguishable. Purely abstract compositions like In water (2025) and Nostalgia 3 (2025), on the other hand, rely on delicately balanced palettes. These pieces either underscore Zheng Zhou’s enduring fascination with natural forms, or resemble some sophisticated endgame of go, transforming viewers into players whose involvement is poignantly at stake.
10 Sik On Street, Wanchai
Hong Kong
T (852) 2810 0317
Email
Web
Tu-Sa 12am – 6pm
Articles
Samson Young 楊嘉輝 / Feature / March 20, 2025
Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Feature / January 13, 2023
Ko Sin Tung / Review / January 7, 2022
Ellen Pau / Feature / December 30, 2019
Wong Ping / Review / September 21, 2019
Ho Tzu Nyen / Review / July 26, 2019
Fictioning as Method: Constructing Mythologies and The Other Story / Feature / October 29, 2018
Various artists / Review / December 19, 2017
Fabien Merelle / Review / May 15, 2017
Wang Zhibo / Review / October 18, 2016
Kiang Malingue is a commercial gallery with spaces in Hong Kong and New York, founded in 2010 by Lorraine Kiang and Edouard Malingue. This initiative builds a critical dialogue between international contemporary artists, both emerging and established, who combine aesthetic concern with conceptual enquiry, and work across different disciplines from video and installation, to painting and sound.
Represented artists
Eric Baudart, Chang Ya Chin, Cho Yong-Ik, Chou Yu-Cheng, Tiffany Chung, Cui Xinming, Ho Tzu Nyen, Brook Hsu, Ko Sin Tung, Kwan Sheung Chi, Kyung-Me, Lai Chih-Sheng, Phillip Lai, Liu Yin, Fabien Mérelle, Miao Ying, Nabuqi, Ellen Pau, Homer Shew, Tao Hui, Tromarama, Trương Công Tùng, Tseng Chien-Ying, Su-Mei Tse, Wang Zhibo, Wang Wei, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wong Ping, Carrie Yamaoka, Hiroka Yamashita, Yang Chi-Chuan, Yeung Hok Tak, Samson Young, Yu Ji, Yuan Yuan, Zheng Bo, Zheng Zhou