Franklin Chow: Zigzagging My Way Home
The first individual exhibition “Zigzagging my way home” by Chinese-Swiss artist Franklin Chow is going to be held at PSA as summer transitions to fall. Thirty-eight pieces including sets of installations, paintings and videos by Franklin Chow will be exhibited as well as his ink-wash “diary” in which he has recorded his daily life for the past twenty years. In addition, four pieces of Chinese antiques from a collection at the Shanghai Museum will be brought to the exhibition, all of which served as inspirations to Chow’s artwork.
Franklin Chow is a direct descendent of Qiu Ying (1494 – 1552), one of the Four Masters of the Ming Dynasty as well as the creator of one of the exhibited antiques that gave Chow inspiration. His Father, Chou Yan-Zhi was also a renowned fine art collector. Growing up in a family well-known for its rich heritage in traditional Chinese art and culture, Chow’s upbringing has rendered him with an extraordinary taste in fine arts. Having moved several times to different countries, Chow has accumulated unique and diverse personal life experiences, which urge him to ponder topics such as cultural identity. In 1992, Chow devoted himself whole-heartedly to working in art while carrying out an array of artistic experiments. His paintings and installations which use traditional Chinese materials such as xuan paper and ink-wash, manifest an expansion of the contemporary horizon. These works also shine a light on his interpretive understanding of the differences and communication between Chinese and western culture.
This exhibition is Chow’s brand new composition that reflects a “zigzagging way home” whilst revisiting China in his seventies. Wandering a zigzagging path through interlaced journeys, visitors are led on an exploration and encouraged to respond to various issues together with Franklin Chow including; cultural identity, homeland versus foreign land, “root”, memory and so on.
About the Artist
Franklin Chow, born in Shanghai, China in 1946 and graduated from Académie de la Grande Chaumière, now lives and works in Laussane and Saint Croix in Switzerland. Chou’s artistic practice integrates traditional Chinese culture with western contemporary arts as he receives diverse influence from traditional painting, calligraphy, visual communication, literature, film and photography. His artworks have been exhibited in a great many countries, including Switzerland, France, Singapore and so on.
(Banner image: Shadow, 2015, 13 figures on metallic support covered with Xuan paper and scorched, variable sizes and configurations, courtesy of the artist.)
