Out of master's tall shadow

Zhao Junzhong is staging his solo show, The State, in Shanghai to display 60 oil paintings he has created in the past three years.[Photo provided to China Daily]

As one of Chen's assistants, Zhao was involved in many of Chen's creations.

Zhao came from a rural area in East China's Shandong province. After graduation from Shandong University of Art & Design, he was assigned a job teaching politics in a countryside school.

In 1995, he quit the job and came to Shanghai. He did all kinds of painting jobs: posters, outdoor advertisements and so on.

A friend introduced Zhao to Chen and he became one of the master's assistants.

Zhao was so attached to his master and had learned almost everything from him that when Chen died suddenly in 2005, he was lost and confused. He didn't even know if he could go on painting.

A few years later, in order to have a new start and to get out of Chen's shadow, Zhao applied for a master's program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

He graduated in 2013. During his time in Beijing, he painted industriously and explored a wide range of possibilities.

Shao Dazhen, a well regarded art critic and a veteran artist himself, says Zhao has benefited greatly from Chen, for his artistic ideas and insight into life, mastery in composition, as well as his understanding of the classical and modern, Chinese and Western art.

"Yet Zhao has moved on to form his distinctive artistic expressions. He is sensitive to the new reality and explores the inside world of today's youth," Shao says.

Zhao has developed a unique point of view that is like "the popular selfies the young take".

"It's as if you can feel a fleeting moment of dismay in that evolving state," says the critic.

If you go

9 am-5 pm, through Thursday. Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculptures Institute Art Museum, 111 Jinzhu Road, Changning district, Shanghai. 021-6275-9930.