Zeng's biggest show offers a good review of the artist's transformation

Zeng Fanzhi: Laocoon. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Zeng Fanzhi: Parcours reviews his transformations in the different stages of his career by presenting representative works of his well-known series, including Xiehe Hospital, Masks, Portraits and Abstract Landscapes. It runs through Nov 19 in Beijing's 798 art district.

A bulk of the displayed 60 paintings are on loan from collecting institutions, galleries and private collectors at home and abroad.

The word "parcours" is not only the title of one of his paintings created in 1990, with an attempt to embark the audience upon a time travel of Zeng's past and present. Also it is connected with the designing idea of the exhibition halls, provided by his longtime collaborators Tadao Ando Architect & Associates.

Six free-standing walls are installed in the exhibition space to form a path on which the audience can survey Zeng's artistic evolution. Each of the walls was cut out a square in the middle to have a huge "window", so that people can shift between works created in different phrases to have a clue of the connections of Zeng's series and his progress. The designing structure, as the Japanese architect Tadao Ando puts, is to scan each layer of the artist’s mind.