Seeking to create a new aesthetic system, Zhu draws complex illustrated maps of the world, which combine architectural landscape theory with traditional artistic techniques of Chinese ink marking and oil painting. He overlays imaginary pictorial geological observations with the effects of human conflict to alter relief views of existing geographical locations. His transformations of material fact into abstract reasoning are investigative, seeking metaphysical responses to land-use and pressing geopolitical issues. Collisions in his work abound between natural phenomena and the complex, fictitious territories and their disputed boundaries. Zhu Rixin challenges ideas of fixed geographical markers, making pictorial representations that synthesise space and time, and explore current conceptions of ‘imposed distance’ in the social sciences. The way in which we experience the world in the Age of Information (the Digital or Computer Age), mediates our understanding of the natural world. Global crises are experienced through news commentary, and though explicit and ever present, it is not our own lived experience. From this our emotional responses can become generic or received. Zhu’s interpretation of scientific data transforms it within artistic means, challenging our perceptions of the current state of the natural world as a result of the actual interventions of man, with his beautiful fictions. Exploring ecological and social issues with an almost scientific rigour Zhu Rixin’s delicate and considered practice proposes a fresh questioning of the very impact of human civilization.
Zhu Rixin Zhu Rixin was born in 1986 in Jiujiang. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing with a Master’s degree. He lives and works in Beijing. His works have been exhibited in Chinese and international museums including Art Museum of Repin Academy of Fine Arts, He Xiangning Art Museum, CAFA Art Museum, and had exposure at art fairs, Art Brussels and Shanghai Art 021.