Furong Zhang is a native of the Republic of China, growing up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. He studied painting in Beijing, and emigrated to the United States in 1989 to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. From his personal reality of cultural histories, he draws upon these twin emotional landscapes of displacement and memory as source material for his narrative, representational style of oil painting. 

Zhang is influenced by the post-World War I German New Objectivity painting, characterized by its unsentimental realism; the painter Jorg Immendorf  is a strong influence. Furong recalls that Immendorf’s work was one of the first art books he purchased upon arriving in the U.S. The representational storytelling style historically characterizing much of Western European art parallels Zhang’s interest in the Beijing opera. Its use of symbolic props and movements creates effects that are simultaneously real and surreal. Here again, the tension between these dualities threads throughout Zhang’s artmaking. Working from memory while referencing a personal photo archive, his paintings careen between past and present, reflecting on his identity while simultaneously experiencing its erasure. His striking paintings illustrate the concept of the ‘perpetual foreigner’ –as he’s dubbed it the practice–  in them, Furong resurrects scenes from Chinese mythology, yet confronts Western contradictions. 

For Zhang’s, the month in residency presented an opportunity to explore new ideas, and enter into positive conversations that may not have happened for him otherwise. “The dialogues during my time there have broadened my thinking on certain themes in my work, through people’s different perspectives,” he says. The generous exchange of ideas and friendship is an invaluable outcome of Zhang’s residency experience.