Chen Zhen, who died (much too young) in Paris in 2000, was a significant artist with a hybrid Chinese and European identity. Although after 1986 he essentially lived and worked in Paris, his personal history and deep cultural roots lay in China, and specifically in Shanghai. From the mid-1990s he returned over and over to a city on fast-forward. Shanghai was undergoing a massive, controversial transformation,[…..]

The listlessness of people waiting in an emergency waiting room contrasts discomfortingly with the gruesomeness of the chunks of human flesh appearing as fresh meat and liberal washes of red. This work is from one of Zeng Fanzhi’s earliest series, known as the “Hospital” series, markedly influenced by German Expressionism and its manifestation of society’s anxieties and decadence, as studied during his formative years at[…..]