The title of the exhibition, "Warm Flow from the East Coast," is a term produced by the artist that evokes the geographical features of his hometown on the Dong-chong Peninsula. The warm current flowing through the peninsula increases the humidity and temperature along the east coast, nurturing marine life with its immense thermal energy in the region. The misty and wet texture with soft light underlying the works resonates with the regional climate of the artist’s hometown and his early life in the southern city of the coast.
Zheng Mengqiang's creations serve as a diary-like expression of narrative, closely linked to his personal memories and past stories. The artist embodied a vision akin to cinematographical scenes and used "blocks" of monochromatic colours to blend in all elements and reconstruct an ideal visual context. The composition has transformed moments in time into narrative images of personal growth that are not about what comes next but rather retrospective of the past. As a result, the nostalgic coastline, pink reefs, inimitable dusks and summer nights, as well as interacting human figures, all become recurring themes in the paintings.
It is particularly worth mentioning that the sentiments shown in Zheng’s works have a strong romantic tendency. His way of capturing fleeting moments is not an indiscriminate expression of emotions but rather a depiction of a neutral and stilled moment. What we have seen in his creations is that every ordinary afternoon we have lived, those sweltering summer nights, and the parting with beloved ones are all irreproducible moments in our lives. Perhaps it can be expressed in terms of the "duration of psychological time," a technique often use in stream-of-consciousness literature, proposed by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. In this case, everything cannot be externalised into reality, such as thoughts, memories of the past, and anticipations towards the future, are all presented vividly in front of us through the artist’s visual creations, forming a pure and profoundly intimate "warm flow. "
Zheng Mengqiang was born in Xiapu, Fujian Province in 1987. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2011 and currently lives and works in Beijing. Zheng Mengqiang's works have been exhibited in various major art institutions domestically and internationally, including the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART), X Museum, Guanshanyue Art Museum, etc. His works have also been collected by institutions such as Today Art Museum, X Museum, and the Australia China Art Foundation.
