Zhu Wei: New Pictures of the Strikingly Bizarre

Universal Design Pte Ltd, Singapore, 2005, 131 pp.

Zhu Wei was invited as the first artist from China for a residency at STPI and he took the opportunity to utilize printing techniques including woodcut, etching, lithography and screenprint on handmade STPI paper to produce 13 different brightly colored prints while staying at STPI for 8 weeks collaborating with professional printers and papermakers. Providing the series of prints with a title from Chinese classical literature (二刻拍案驚奇 Erke Paian Jingqi), Zhu Wei further explores his familiar subject matter of common people and their lives in contemporary China. Images of peasant workers, figures from his previous ink painting series such as the Festival series and the Heavenly Maiden Scattering Flowers series as well as his records of the SARS event appear in the prints, revealing the artist’s concerns with society and the real sentiments of common people.

Essay in both Chinese and English by Li Xiaoshan.