Zeng Fanzhi was born in Wuhan in Hubei Province in 1964. Unlike the majority of Chinese painters working today, Zeng's paintings are psychologically driven rather than politically. At the beginning of his career in the early '90s, Zeng Fanzhi's paintings depicted apocalyptic, expressionist imagery, which seemed to represent the artist's sinister view of reality. Austere images of slaughterhouses and hospital scenes featuring sadistic doctors were common themes that seemed to reflect the artist’s deep contemplation of society and culture and profound sense of realism. In his more recent series of paintings, however, to which “Sky” belongs, Zeng replicates the emotional and psychological strain of the individual's experience in contemporary society. The existential images of a lone figure standing in nature, gazing absently off into the distance with his hands stuffed in his pockets, symbolizes the sense of alienation and detachment triggered by the overwhelming rush to acquire and consume in modern day China.

Something Zeng once said of his earlier works seems to apply even more poignantly for these fragile examinations of the inner psyche: "Painting is a painful process; it forces the human figures in my painting into a state of pain and anxiety. I paint images of people in tragic situations, and they express everything that I want to express" (Zeng quoted in V. C. Doran, China's New Art, Post-1989, exh. cat., Hanart/TZ Gallery, Hong Kong 1993, p. 148). As renowned art critic Huang Du once aptly described one of Zeng’s earlier series, “Union Medical College Hospital,” “He paints with the unrestrained brush strokes of Raoul Dufy, and the free, vigorous gestures of Willem de Kooning. What’s more important is that he paints from everyday experience, drawing on memories of daily life and personal mindscapes. These vivid, moving images are subjective distortions and exaggerations of the artist's perspective on the human condition. Sinuous brush strokes that embody flesh and blood and the expressions of terror upon the faces of his figures are the products of his painstaking observations and sublimation of everyday life.”

The work of Zeng Fanzhi has been noted for both his expressionist style and his disciplined interrogations into the underlying tensions facing China's new cosmopolitan classes. Zeng established himself as a painter with his famous “Mask” series, in which the figures hide their anxieties and conflicting emotions beneath the veneer of a cool white and inscrutable mask. Zeng's series adeptly satirized China's new social tensions, new ambitions, and "the clumsy motives and deportment of the upper-class" (Zeng, quoted in L. Pi, Behind the Mask, 2006).

While the subject matter of the paintings relates to personal memories and experiences, Zeng's heavily expressionist style was the result of his understanding exhibitions of works by Robert Rauschenberg, Edvard Munch, and Zao Wouki, masters in whom the young artist discovered a synthesis of technique with concept and subject matter. In the series of “Portraits” that followed the “Mask” series, Zeng becomes more direct. His subjects remove their masks and are seated alone, and Zeng seems less concerned with the frivolity of social personae and more concerned with mortality itself. The influence of German expressionism and portraiture traditions remains apparent; figures are left unfinished, their flesh raw and exposed, lit almost religiously but isolated in the unpainted linen of the canvas. Zeng's concerns have matured along with his techniques, and here he has moved past his concerns with social perceptions, delving more deeply into the frailty of life itself.

In 2004, Zeng developed a new painting style, concentrating on landscapes and figural compositions within them. These works are unified by their innovative stylistic effects, in which an almost chaotic array of linear marks asserts their purely painterly presence while nevertheless serving representational purposes. The wild grasses of the landscape, for example, are defined by repetitively 'drawing' long, slightly bent lines through wet paint. This build-up of linear mark-making creates a wholly different atmosphere from that of Zeng's earlier work, forming a netlike mesh that calls attention to the surface of the painting rather than simply to what the painting depicts.

The present painting from the “Sky Series” is a masterful example of Zeng's themes, subjects and technique. Depicting two typical stoic Zeng characters, against a background of long and wild grasses, the painting is subtle in its meaning, working on multiple layers. Dressed in similar blue outfits, reminiscent of two conflicting cultural iconic dress codes, the blue non-descript suit of Maoist China, and the tailored winter coats of haut couture in the west, the two men seem to encapsulate the angst of the modern young Chinese in a bewildering and undefined modern society. With puzzled and strained expressions on their faces, they articulate the fundamental isolation and bafflement which results from an internal lack of knowledge of who they really are.

The poignancy of the painting is further heightened as the two figures stand posing with their bicycles. The bicycle was the traditional mode of transport in Maoist China and is evocative of that world. It seems as if the two characters are loathe to give up their past, however they also do not seem comfortable embracing the new China. The young man with the blue bicycle seems the more perturbed of the two, dressed all in blue including his shirt and tie. His expression is tense and unhappy, downturned eyebrows and mouth. Even the blue of his bicycle is non-descript. The one with the red bicycle seems a little happier internally, upturned eyebrows and a wry smile playing on his lips. Under his heavy blue coat, he seems to be wearing a highly colored floral shirt the cuff of which peaks out from his coat sleeve. Is Zeng suggesting that there is some comfort to be found in adopting Western consumerism, and brand named products? Is redemption to be found from letting go of the past and embracing the new, and in fact, is the confusion and perplexity facing the modern generation ultimately solvable? Even the color red of the bicycle offers some solace as traditionally red is the color of good fortune for Chinese.

But for the moment the young men are uneasy. As with all of Zeng's portraitures they have large, raw, fleshy hands. Our hands always show our true psychological condition, we may hide our emotions and bewilderment behind a mask on our face, but our shaking hands will always reveal our true psyche state. The wild and long grasses of the “Sky Series” are indicative of the internal emotional and psychological process going on inside Zeng's head. One major constant throughout his works is his concern with the inner psyche, the internal world. The grasses are strong and chaotic, dark and menacing, vibrant and energetic, almost like the confused and perplexing thoughts swirling around in the head. The grasses almost act like a net helping to protect the two men, separating them from and putting a distance between them and the viewer. But the uncontrolled wildness of the grasses is juxtaposed against a large, white and warm sky, suggesting that frightening and wild emotions are also containable, and can be lived with.