Past Event
More Life: Ching Ho Cheng
David Zwirner Gallery
Ching Ho Cheng, "Chemical Garden," 1970 (detail)
Ching Ho Cheng, curated by Simon Wu, will be on view at the gallery’s 525 West 19th Street location in New York beginning September 14, 2021.
Throughout his career, Ching Ho Cheng (1946–1989) produced a rich and varied body of work that ranged from colorfully psychedelic canvases to subdued, abstract explorations of light, tone, and texture in gouaches, torn paper, and experiments in iron oxide. Deeply spiritual and absorbed in ancient cultural traditions, Cheng described his paintings as “a way of seeing. It is so hard to describe. It is a very personal view of the universe. I keep seeing it everywhere. I can't escape it. It's energy. I see it in a streetlight. I can see it in an oil slick on the road. I can see it in a peach pit. I can see it everywhere. For me painting is a very spiritual thing. It is the most spiritual thing I do.” Art-making, for Cheng, was rooted in process, alchemy, and transcendence, that invite contemplative close looking.