Zheng Guogu: Visionary Transformation

^{Zheng Guogu, Visionary Transformation of the Tranquility of Heart, 2016. Oil on canvas. 82 7/8 × 58 11/16″ (210.5 × 149 cm). Courtesy the artist.}

The artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., Visionary Transformation highlights a selection of twelve paintings from Zheng’s Great Visionary Transformation series made over the last eight years. These works retool imagery from traditional Buddhistthangkas, hanging scroll paintings that serve as meditation tools, typically depicting a central mandala or deity surrounded by disciples and donors. Zheng digitally superimposes multiplethangkas into a single hallucinatory image, which he paints on canvas using a number of different techniques. In their dense and evanescing complexity, these paintings evoke the Buddhist belief in the impermanence of the physical realm, offering allegories for the unstable relationships between systems of power, belief, and history that mark our age.