Worldly renowned for his flower themed works, Zhuang Hong-yi has established himself as one of the most prominent Chinese contemporary artists. Impulse Gallery is greatly honoured to host Zhuang’s major solo exhibition in Switzerland featuring the latest body of the highly collected flowerbed series: Blossom.
Cherry blossoms, lotus blossoms, plum blossoms; they all symbolize the transcendent nature of being alive. We bloom, we shed, we decay, we hibernate and wait for the right light to start the whole process over again. Blossoms spend seasons in disguise until they gloriously reveal themselves in a flurry pastel petalled drama of the sight and the smell: marking another miraculous full trip around the sun. With this exhibition, Impulse Gallery aspires to bring the magic of flowers to Switzerland in close collaboration with Zhuang Hong-yi.
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The cherry (blossom) on top.
« We might not all speak the same language, but we can all read flowers. »
« Blossom is my attempt to display the romantic imagining of beauty meandering amidst falling gentleness. Life's beauty is the growing journey through ups and downs. Despite all challenges and negativity, blossoms will always pop-up year after year, providing hope and color when times seem to be despairing. Cherry trees grow in regions with cold winters. The more brutal the winter, the sweeter the fruit. After this extended season of global disancing, the cherry blossoms remind us that all seasons come to an end and that the time to return outdoors where we can enjoy nature and each other will come. »
« My Ikigai (生き甲斐: purpose in life) is to inspire people with the colors and patterns of my flower-themed works; allowing them to take a break from all social disarrays of our controversial disconnected world. Connection with people of all cultures and backgrounds is my biggest aspiration: we might not all speak the same language, but we can all read flowers. »
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Available Blossom Works
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« The flower is so dominant in my works, because they are a universal and unifying symbol for peace and prosperity »
Characterised by daringly-bold colour palettes, Zhuang's sophisticated, repetitive, and precise floral motifs both reflect his Chinese background and integrate a Western allure as a universal symbol of prosperity and optimism. The well known and highly collected Flowerbed works are crafted from delicate pieces of painted rice paper, which he has bent and folded into hundreds of tiny buds that create an optical illusion in change of colour and light as you move your body and eyes from one side of the work to the other. The flowerbeds are composed of painstakingly folded rice paper flowers and a mixture of pigment, oil and acrylic paints that appear to bloom from the walls: the sculptural three-dimensionality of the densely-planted canvases read as both objects and paintings.
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Available Flowerbed Works
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« My art is about happiness, enrichment, and re-enchantment. »
Zhuang's Landscape works represent a more traditional painterly approach, depicting vibrant vistas through a brilliant combination of gestural impasto and folded rice paper. Memory and energy are critical themes in Zhuang's artwork, as are his observations of nature, he notes, "over the last three years I look to the sunsets and I go to different countries to see the real landscapes, the light and the movement." Working with a freedom of style, his daring strokes of bright colours are expressive and unconfined. Colours melting together and paint dripping down make the canvas blossom under the eye: appearing to move and thrive with the viewer, a beautifully defiant natural symbol in the face of aggressive global urbanisation.
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Available Landscape Works
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Throughout the past decades Zhuang has achieved international acclaim. His sculptural paintings have featured in over a hundred solo exhibitions and group exhibtions worldwide including the Found Museum in Beijing, China, the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, the Ulm Museum in Germany, the Erarta Museum in Russia and the 55th Venice Biennale, Italy, in 2013. Zhuang studied at the Sichuan College of Fine Arts in China and continued his education in Europe at the Minerva Academy in the Netherlands. As of today, Zhuang spends his time distributed at his studio in China and residence in Switzerland.
DARE TO BE CREATIVE. DARE TO BE IMPULSIVE.
Visiut us today at Haldenstrasse 19, 6006 Lucerne or email us at info@impulsegallery.com for more on Zhuang Hong-yi's work.
