Around 1985, Zheng Chongbin began to blend acrylic paints and ink on traditional xuan paper, describing his use of white acrylic as ‘white ink’. By 1987, he had abandoned the soft, long-bristled maobi brush for the paibi, a horizontally oriented long and flat brush made of hard, short bristles.
In the series Another State of Man, completed between 1987 and 1988, Zheng melds seemingly incompatible materials and representational modes into a single image. The results—thirty paintings in total—are amorphous shapes with vaguely human forms and landscape characteristics. Each painting dwarfs human viewers with its larger-than-life scale. Zheng intended the individual scrolls to be exhibited in groups of four or eight and in no particular order. This suggests the state of flux that his works adopt as they intermingle.
No. 24 has a totemic composition and complex surface textures. There are distinct signs of figuration, including wisps of hair and perhaps a veiled eye in the top quadrant. The dark background, varied consistencies, and nuanced surface drama result from the spontaneous interactions of Zheng’s materials: ink, acrylic, and water.