Zhu Cheng

Zhu Cheng

Director of Zhu Cheng Stone Carvings (Private) Art Museum
Director of China Image and Architecture Museum (in preparation)
Vice President of Sichuan Chengdu Museum Association
Member of the expert group of Anren Museum Town, China
Researcher at the Sculpture Institute of China National Academy of Painting
Member of the National Urban Sculpture Construction Steering Committee
Executive Director of China Sculpture Society
Adjunct Professor, School of Architecture and Design, Southwest Jiaotong University

Selected Large-Scale Public Art Planning & Design Projects

2017 Overall design of the memorial sculpture for the compatriots killed in the Chengdu bombing
2014 Dujiangyan China Centennial Folk Image Museum overall planning and design
2004 Evaluation on the planning and design of Daci Temple, Kuanzhai Alley, Wenshu Monastery and Tianfu Square in Chengdu Cultural Relics Protection Area
2003 Chengdu Urban Public Art Planning (collaboration between Chengdu architects, planners, landscapers, and artists)
2002 Tianwen design (first prize in bidding, Shenyang Science and Technology Park)
In 2001, Zhu Cheng Private Stone Carving Art Museum was established (approved by Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau)

Solo exhibition:

1995 Zhu Cheng Sculpture Solo Exhibition

Selected Group Exhibitions

2020 Pre-Exhibition of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale: Individual Art, Living Together—Joint Solo Exhibition of Participating Artists
2019 Classics of the Times – 2019 Chinese Sculpture Academic Invitational Exhibition
2017 27 Degree Angle – East Lake International Ecological Sculpture Biennale The 7th China Beijing International Art Biennale
2016 New Words on the Silk Road – Joint Exhibition of Works by Sculptors from the East and West’ Silk Road Sculpture Theme Invitational Exhibition
2012 Datong International Sculpture Biennale China’s Pose The Second Chinese Sculpture Exhibition
2011 Chengdu International Architecture Biennale
2007 Harmony but Different – Southwest China Contemporary Sculpture Invitational Exhibition Beijing Exhibition Starting from the Southwest – Southwest Contemporary Art Exhibition 1985-2007
2001 Tianji Chengdu International Convention and Exhibition Center The Other Shore was selected into the Crossroads China Public Environmental Art Program Exhibition

1999 Happiness, Angry, Sorrow, Happiness, Gateway of the Century, Chinese Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition
1994 Main relief sculpture Light of Wisdom on the Deyang Art Wall won the Excellence Award in the Second National Urban Sculpture Exhibition
1993 The Wave Contains the Flying Boat was selected into the Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition in Tainan City, Taiwan
1989 Morning Light was selected into the Seventh National Art Exhibition
1985 A Thousand Arrows won the special prize of China’s First Sports Art Exhibition and the special trophy issued by the International Olympic Committee

Portraits of Ba and Shu ​Civilization Ancestors

Description

Text: Dr. Sophia Kidd

 Zhu Cheng’s preoccupation with collecting, archiving, and exhibiting the legacy of the ancient Chuanyu 川渝 Ba 巴 and Shu 蜀 civilizational roots reveals itself in this multi-media rendering of the Ba and Shu ancestors. Shu is traditionally known as the civilizational core of present-day Sichuan (Chuan), while the Ba people resided further east, in the area where we find Chongqing (Yu) today.

The word Chuanyu, then, is a composite word signifying the Sichuan-Chongqing area. The revival of this area is an agenda for China today, as it develops what is known as the ‘Twin-Cities’ project involving economic and cultural revitalization of this area.

Zhu Cheng’s devotion to the cultivation of cultural memory extends back to the earliest known roots of Chuanyu culture, to the Ba and Shu ancestors. 

Here, the artist renders portraits of these elders in an abstract way somewhat akin to the xieyi 写意 method of Chinese ink-wash painting, evoking the spiritual essence of these elders which is still rooted in the soil of Zhu Cheng’s native region, and kept very much alive in his private museum, the ZHU CHENG STONE CARVING ART MUSUEM, where spiritual icons of China’s three doctrines (Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism) are protected and preserved for posterity.

Untitled

Description

Text: Dr. Sophia Kidd 

The artist has chosen examples of sculptures previously exhibited in his private museum, the Zhu Cheng Chengdu Private Stone Carving Museum, and placed them in this exhibition along with a series of hand-drawn portraits also on exhibition in his private museum. During China’s Cultural Revolution, there was an impulse to overturn nostalgic devotion to China’s past, to move forward into the future. 

Coupled with theft, this drive for progress saw many ancient images of the Three Religions (Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism) beheaded or otherwise mutilated. Here the artist exhibits these mutilated ancient stone torsos and heads along with the hand-drawn recreations of the heads. Zhu Cheng’s portraits are rendered much as the portraits of the Ba and Shu forebears are in another of his works on exhibition in Geographies of Feeling—in a xieyi 写意 manner of abstraction. This manner of abstraction serves to retrieve what cannot be seen today, to highlight what has been erased from cultural memory.

Text: Zhu Cheng

“From the 1980s to the present, decades of energy and effort have been spent to complete the Zhu Cheng Chengdu Private Stone Carving Museum collection project. Thousands of pieces of stone carvings from the Han Dynasty to the Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, over two thousand years of portraits have been assembled.

The museum takes as its theme the totemic architecture of stone carvings, and the architecture of classical Chinese images. Ancient people used architecture as a shelter for the body and as a scene for the spirit, enshrining the body and spirit in the form of totem plates in underground catacombs and buildings.

They serve as records of architectural forms from different historical periods: of houses, buildings, platforms, pavilions, palaces, temples, chambers, offices, places, cities, and halls. At the same time, they inscribe the evolution of totemic architecture: from the figurative house to the conceptual city, and from the earthly architecture to the heavenly sanctuary. We discover a vivid history of ancient underground society with its urban culture, along with the countryside, architecture, religion, art, and folklore. “

-Excerpt from Life • Fate • Destiny The past, present and future of the countryside + city + architecture