About Xu Zhen

​

It doesn't come as a surprise that Xu Zhen is regularly referred to as a trickster, an art chameleon and as a prankster. Although he is still quite young of age (born 1977), he already has an impressive artistic past and is regarded as highly influential for the younger art generation in China. Starting very early in the Chinese art scene of the mid-late nineties, he went through different periods and followed diverse interests in artistic creation, spanning tendencies from body art and performance to complex art installations, media art and collective art practices, just to name a few. Xu Zhen exhibited 2000 in the legendary Fuck Off-exhibition in Shanghai (curated by Feng Boyi and Ai Weiwei) and has so far been the youngest artist from China to participate at the Venice Biennial (2001 and 2005). In 2009, Xu Zhen created MadeIn Company, with which he follows a collective approach towards artistic production.

Xu Zhen's interests are diverse, and his reflective examination of his environment results in multi layered works. However, Xu Zhen likes to challenge the spectator and often evokes seemingly simple associations, whereas the subtle multi layered character of his works mostly needs further time and refinement to be discovered. It is as if he were playing with two levels in his works: A first and simple level, giving space for misunderstandings and wrong assumptions and a second level of closely knit associations and multi layered meanings which only reveal themselves after deeper understanding and scrutiny of his works. These two different levels, the seemingly simple one and the complex one, create an interdependent tension, unsettling the spectator and making him feel insecure in his judgement. It is this insecurity which finally forces the spectator to abandon uncritical judgements and to develop independent and reflective perspectives. Xu Zhen illustrates the subtleness of Chinese art and Chinese society and motivates us to dig further even if classical stereotypes present seemingly easy explications.

Xu Zhen was born 1977 in Shanghai, where he still lives. He has exhibited, either as Xu Zhen or under 'MadeIn Company', internationally at museums and biennales, such as, Venice Biennale (2001, 2005), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2004), ICP (2004), Mori Art Museum (2005), PS1 (2006), Tate Liverpool (2007), Ruhrtriennale (2012), Hayward Gallery (2012), Witte de With in Rotterdam (2012), Lyon Biennale (2013), Guggenheim Museum (2017) etc. He had major institutional solo shows at S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2009), at the IKON Gallery in Birmingham (2009), at the Kunsthalle Bern (2011), at the Ullens Center of Contemporary Art in Beijing (2014) and at Kunsthalle Graz (2015). His work has been highlighted three times so far at Art Basel Unlimited (2007, 2015, 2019).