Selected Works
Part 1
1990’s - 2010
(Life Theatre)
Zheng Guogu
My Teacher
1993
C-print
60 × 90 cm
Zheng Guogu
My Bride No.6
1995
C-print
100 × 60 cm
Zheng Guogu
Tokyo Sky Story No.2
1998
C-Print
61 × 100 cm
Zheng Guogu
Life and Dreams of Youth from Yangjiang
1996-1998
C-print, and handmade paper-carving on photographic paper
60 × 100 cm
Zheng Guogu
Consume is Ideal, to Consume Dispels Despair
1998
C-print, and handmade paper-carving on photographic paper
61 × 100 cm
Zheng Guogu
An Age Flooded with Images - Dolls Acting EverywPere
1999
C-print, and handmade paper-carving on photographic paper
93 × 57 cm
Today, we are already used to photographs around us. Since 1994, I’ve been playing games with photographs. To me, it holds a special charm -- games are a kind of practice, and thinking does not waste, hm. I know it is a matter of time for me to think in this way.
My work was a process, and I wanted the reader to understand my work in a comprehensive way. So I put the negatives together and developed them on a piece of printing paper, in the hope that the reader could read my whole work instead of seeing a fragment. I believe this way of arrangement can contain more things. Later I put more and more negatives together. There’s neither focus nor composition. I think this is what I’m interested in. People understand my work by reading, and that’s the only way to understand the whole process.
My photographic works cannot be enlarged or reduced. The negatives are developed on a scale of 1:1. A work contains a lot of information, like microchips. I think it is close to the computer age. We can hold more and more information, so I make my photos as compact as possible, so as to put the world into a thin piece of printing paper.
——Zheng Guogu 1997-1998
Zheng Guogu
Computer Controlled by Pig’s Brain Special Edition
2005
Oil on canvas
80 × 80 cm
Zheng Guogu
Computer Controlled by Pig’s Brain No.113
2007
Oil on carpet
80 × 80 cm
Zheng Guogu
Computer Controlled by Pig’s Brain No.118
2007
Oil on canvas
80 × 80 cm
In the painting series Computure Controlled by Pig’s Brain started in 2005, Zheng Guogu uses fabrics of various colours and textures (most of which come from the interior design and renovation industryfamiliar to him) as canvases, and the texts in the paintings are sourced from the 1990s Hong Kong youthpopular culture magazine YES. These texts are about idols, private life of celebrities, popular music,fashion, shopping, relationships and horoscopes, which belong to a genre of mantras preaching consumerist culture to young people. Zheng Guogu extracted the words and fonts from the magazines andthen rearranged and coloured them. After the computers have filled the texts with colours, the media information has gone through a painterly transformation.
These texts are still being used in Zheng Guogu’s later works, with an air from the late 1990s preserved in them. The longer time passes, the easier it is to feel the intrinsic emptiness of the information. These texts are later combined with urban street photographs taken by Zheng Guogu, news images from television and even sceneries from The Age of Empire, turning into a second layer that adheres to the socialsituations in reality, which helps reveal the ideologies hidden under the images. It’s also an intuitive response to the reality in which contemporary paintings are being consumed merely as information.
Zheng Guogu
Frieze No.2
2007
Oil on canvas
183 × 296 cm
Zheng Guogu
New York Nightscape
Since 2008
Embroidery and acrylic on canvas
210 × 365.5 cm
Zheng Guogu
Hong Kong 2
2009
Acr ylic on canvas
210 × 365.5 cm
Part 2
2011 - Now
(From Semiotics to Energetics)
Zheng Guogu
The Great visionary Transformation No.1
2011
Oil and embroidery on canvas
168 × 107 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the Purification
2011-2013
Oil on canvas
203 × 138 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the Happiness No.2
2013
Oil on canvas
208 × 153 cm
Zheng Guogu
Ultra Violet Visionary Transformation No.2
2014-2015
Oil on canvas
208.5 × 147 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of Achievement II
2016
Oil on canvas
207 × 144.5 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the Auspicious IV
2016
Oil on canvas
155 × 108 cm
The Visionary Transformation series uses traditional tangka elements to explore how art can inspire the viewers intotranscendental experiences —— when the viewers gaze at the surface of the paintings or their forms, the mind can enter a balanced state and a focus close to the state of meditation.
Certain correlation exists between the consciousness of the universe and the human soul, inner energy concentrationspots can be activated through sounds, light and colors. When I use these “ancient Pop” to create new art, I tried to present the interactions of energy generated at the moment when the viewer looks at the tangka. This is a hiddenprocess produced inside the viewers, it’s not flat, but a stereoscopic moving mode of thoughts, or a transforming process.
——Zheng Guogu
Zheng Guogu
Mantra Wheel of Palden Lhamo (Career Mantra Wheel No.3)
2012
Oil on canvas
200 × 200 cm
Zheng Guogu
Mantra Wheel (for Career No.2)
2012
Oil on canvas
200 × 200 cm
Zheng Guogu
Mantra Wheel of Hayagriva According to Padmasambhava
2012-2015
Oil on canvas
198 × 198 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Aesthetic Resonance of Chakra No.1
2013-2014
Oil on canvas
173 × 134 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Aesthetic Resonance of Chakra No.2
2013-2014
Oil on canvas
173 × 134 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Aesthetic Resonance of Chakra No.6
2013-2014
Oil on canvas
173 × 134 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves (Marcel Duchamp)
2014
Oil on canvas
210 × 147 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves (Hui Neng)
2014
Oil on canvas
210 × 147 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves (Senior moral)
2016
Oil on canvas
134 × 106 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves (Don Juan)
2017
Oil on canvas
134 × 106 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves (founding yuan ling)
2017
Computer cut texts, oil on canvas
210 × 147 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves of The Sage - Shui Yue Guan Yin
2009-2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
290 ×176 cm
Zheng Guogu
The Brain Nerves of The Sage - Horus
2021
Oil on canvas
154 × 106 cm
I found that sages were usually very calm. They had the wisdom to deal with the imbalance of the brain nerves, and they were able to bridge the gap between the left and right brains and produce a certain kind of photoelectric effect.
And artmaking to me is to reach the moment when the brainwaves of the sages synchronise with those of the viewers and when the frequencies of the two resonate with one another.
—Zheng Guogu
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the West No.1
2017
Oil on canvas
155 × 189 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the West No.2
2018
Oil on canvas
155 × 193 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the West No.4
2021
Oil on canvas
194.7 × 146.5 cm
Zheng Guogu
"Visionary Transformation of the West" 2024-3
2024
Oil on canvas
135 × 117 cm
Zheng Guogu
"Visionary Transformation of the West" 2024-6
2024
Oil on canvas
126 × 96 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary Transformation of the West - Another Code of Da Vinci
2025
Oil on canvas
99 × 221.5 cm
Zheng Guogu
Founding Yuan Ling (Visionary World in a Changing State of Mind)
2018
Oil and acrylic on canvas
154 × 106 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary World in a Changing State of Mind (Senior moral)
2018
Oil on canvas
154 × 106 cm
Zheng Guogu
Visionary World in a Changing State of Mind (Lao Zi)
2018
Oil on canvas
154 × 106 cm
In the painting series of Visionary World in a Changing State of Mind, Zheng Guogu places the observational center of energy at the “heart chakra.” Located at the axis of the “chakra system,” the “heart chakra” is generally considered to be the source of emotional energy. Zheng views the expansion of the “heart chakra” to be a process resulting from an individual’s correspondence with different settings, and suggests that by using one’s heart to correspond with art’s various forms, the viewer will undergo an evolution in their mental state, leading to the opening up of new dimensions of personal perception.
Zheng Guogu
Back to the Centre of Vitality—Huineng (Dantian)
2020
Oil and acrylicon canvas
154 × 106 cm
Zheng Guogu
Back to the Centre of Vitality — Lao Tzu (Dantian)
2020
Oil and acrylicon canvas
154 × 106 cm
Zheng Guogu
Back to the Centre of Vitality—Guanshiyin (Dantian)
2020- 2021
Oil and acrylicon canvas
154 × 106 cm
20th-century art has always been under the shadow of conceptual art. I suggest that we depart from semiotics and look into energetics; in this way, we may create art related to our energy. Energetics mayreveal another system hidden in our body, thus allowing the audience to see the artwork itself without any assumption—this may be the path that art of the 21st century needs to explore.
Through energetics, we may enter a perceivable sensory energy system of the body. I have studied various human activities, including thangka and traditional Chinese medicine, to explore how to use my body to examine the energy of the surrounding space and how to evoke the potential energy gathering points in my body.
There is a powerful spiritual dimension and cosmic energy within our lives, from which we think about the connection between ourselves and the world around us and examine those seemingly unexplainableexperiences. It is in this process that people's perception may return to a natural state—to the originalbeauty, to the law, and to the universal body. This law is not only about art but also about the universe; we should run with it. In this way, the work itself will communicate with the audience.
—Zheng Guogu
All art works by Zheng Guogu © the Artist
Courtesy of the Artist and Vitamin Creative Space.
