Gallery Antje Wachs is pleased to present “ Landschaften” (“landscapes”), our first solo exhibition of the young painter Yuzheng Cheng, on view from March 3 to April 22.

The title is owed to a series of pictures published in the media documenting the Iraqi and Afghan war. Cheng has been working on this series since spring 2005 and his starting point is how man is able to cope with this picture overload in pictorial respect.

His motifs have been taken from the internet, the print media or from television. In contrast to the inconspicuous exhibition title the paintings are not predictable at all. They show significant dissimilarities to reality, and demonstrate that the pictorial elements in substance do not correspond with each other. But with all their indefiniteness they are fixed together in the painting.

Cheng`s approach gives us the opportunity to distance ourselves from the dullness of the media coverage and to focus on the basic difference between reality and pictorial reality. In contrast to the trivial and direct media reality Cheng`s paintings symbolize the remoteness that stands out of real time and put the occurrences into proportion. The reproduction of a presumed reality and her perception as truth is not what counts. In Cheng`s paintings the facts are pictorially altered and put together again and this enables the viewer to see the reality beyond the surface.

 

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Cheng Yuzheng was born
in Suzhou, VR China, in 1977

He lives
and works in Berlin

2005

master student under Prof. KH Hödicke
Theodorus-Kunst-Preises 2005

2001-2005

Unversität der Künste Berlin
under Prof. KH Hödicke

2000-2001

studies free graphics at the
Muthesius Hochschule für Kunst
und Design, Kiel

1995-1998

studies interior design
at the University for Architectur
Nanjing, VR China


Exhibitions

2006

Landschaften
Galerie Antje Wachs, Berlin

2005
Absolventenausstellung
Universität der Künste, Berlin

Junge Malerei aus Berlin
Galerie Thomas Levy, Hamburg

Touché [1974-2005]
Klasse KH Hödicke
an der UdK, Universität der Künste, Berlin.

2004

Identität im digitalen Zeitalter
Bundesdruckerei und Künstlerhaus
Bethanien, Berlin.

2003

Cheng, Yuzheng
Galerie für aktuelle Malerei, Berlin
Klasse Hödicke, Universität
der Künste, Berlin

Neue Bilder III
Galerie für aktuelle Malerei, Berlin

Schaustelle 8
Galerie Giesler + Partner, Berlin.

2002
Kunst-und Kulturverein
Artibus, Berlin

Schaustelle 7
Galerie Eva Poll, Berlin.