Zhang Hongtu’s expansive range of work combines icons and metaphysical concepts. He is a versatile artist whose paintings, installations and digital work connect art with life experiences. His work defies expectations by manipulating and interfacing cultural references and materials, and transforms iconic images. Among his ongoing projects is a series of paintings that revisits the work of traditional Chinese landscape painters such as Cheng Sui, Fan Kuan, Shi Tao, Guo Xi and recreates their work in the styles of Western Impressionist painters, van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet. The paintings on view here take the form of paintings by Cheng Sui and evoke different times of the day as a triptych in the manner of Claude Monet.

Trained as a painter, Zhang Hongtu graduated from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, Beijing, China in 1969. He came to the United States in 1982, where he studied at the Art Student’s League, not expecting to stay in New York for long. His work has been exhibited widely including Shuffling the Deck, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NY; A Brush with Tradition, Chinese Traditional and Contemporary Art, The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; and Queens International, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and was an Artist in Residence at South Africa Artists, Johannesburgh, South Africa.  www.momao.com   www.goedhuiscontemporary.com