In examining the artistic movements and stylistic developments of Chinese artists over the past few decades, Zhou Chunya stands apart from his contemporaries. In inspiration, symbolism, technique, and purpose, Zhou has effectively developed his own artistic direction, continually diverging from the movements around him to explore and establish his own means of expression through art. Rejecting participation in the politically and ideologically charged artistic theories celebrated by other contemporary artists in China, Zhou instead cultivated his own passions and interests. Zhou’s unique and distinctive voice has earned him recognition throughout his career, culminating in his first retrospective held at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2010. The same year, Zhou was named Artist of the Year at the 2010 Art Power Awards, a title awarded the previous year to his close friend, Zhang Xiaogang. Zhou’s refusal to mold his artistic voice to a discernable movement has set his work apart in originality of both style and expression.

Zhou’s first departure from the artistic movements around him came in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. While Zhou’s classmates at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute united to express the social upheaval and historical trauma of the Cultural Revolution through the newly established Scar Art movement, Zhou elected instead to focus on depictions of idyllic, natural scenes. Zhou explains that while he appreciated the Scar Art narratives of his peers, his artistic interests lay elsewhere, stating, “I only wanted to sketch from life because in so doing I was confronting an immediate, living nature. This allowed my artistic expression to remain at one with my passions.” Zhou continued to explore this interest in natural scenes and compositions throughout his career, seeking to establish an amalgamation of traditional Chinese sentiment with expressionist visual inspiration.

Memory of Lung Chuen Lake engenders Zhou Chunya’s aesthetic experimentation in combining traditional literati refinement with the bolder aesthetics of neo-expressionist influences. The scene emerges from the canvas in the luminous haze of a recalled memory, the figures and features obscured, yet lovingly recalled. The inky, black water and texturally rich, rocky landscape is illuminated by the radiant glow of the seated feminine figure at the center of the canvas. Her pearlescent white skin juxtaposed against the silken, flowing black of her surroundings establishes a commanding, yet gentle focal point, luring the viewer into the painting as though drawn into a shared nostalgic reminiscence. The featureless swimmer and the abstraction of the landscape serve as appropriate qualities in capturing the essence of memory. As Zhou explains, “I exaggerate the visual forms and purposefully compress the concrete details. To achieve the universal and timeless symbolic character that I am after, I must sacrifice the details.” While incorporating the scholarly compositional elements from his literati influence with a neo-expressionistic aesthetic, Memory of Lung Chuen Lake emblemizes Zhou’s artistic intentions, achieving stunningly haunting results.

Throughout his artistic career, Zhou has continually sought to explore his own originality, refusing participation in surrounding trends and movements to instead pursue his own unique representation of aesthetic inspiration. As he continually extends his artistic investigation, he seeks persistently to represent truth. In his own words, Zhou Chunya insists, “True ideas are very important. What is true is more important than what is correct.”