My paintings deal with personal and collective emotions of being a first-generation immigrant in America, revolving around themes of alienation, displacement, and self-contradiction. I use a deconstructed and allegorical approach to create my painted scenes, incorporating my memories and experiences of my native country, China, as well as my current residence in America. My past experience during the Cultural Revolution in China, a time of social unrest, widespread propaganda, violence, and expected obedience to authority, has informed the underlying mood of my paintings and my questions of the place of the individual self in relation to its society. In my work I am interested in dualisms and tensions between the preservation of history and erasure, belonging and alienation, and material body and soul. I juxtapose symbols of construction, detritus, ritual, and ambivalence to reference my Chinese American immigrant experience and personal emotions that are in flux alongside historical and contemporary social environments.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Furong Zhang was born and raised in Shanghai, China during the Cultural Revolution. In 1977 he attended the Shanghai Normal University, majoring in oil painting. He received his MFA from Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing in 1987. In 1989, Zhang was part of the controversial first China Avant-Garde art show at Beijing's National Fine Art Museum. During that time he participated in various exhibitions held at the Beijing and Shanghai Fine Art Museums. Since immigrating to America in 1989, he has attended residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and exhibited nationally and internationally at various museums and galleries, including Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Bellefonte Art Museum, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and Yale University. He currently lives and works in central Pennsylvania.