CITY LIVING
ART TALK
Night of Shanghai and Roses Emanuel Slavescu
I
t’s not hard to find impressive pieces of work by local artists on Moganshan Lu in Putuo District, a place made famous by its many art galleries and colourful graffiti streets. What is not so common however is the dedication with which some of these artists put into their work. One such example is Cong Fangzheng, who despite being the director of galleries in Israel and Japan, as well as an international name in Paris, only lives in a tiny studio room directly connected to his small, Shanghai-based gallery.“What is important to me is the quality of my work, not the size of the apartment I live in,” he says. “It makes me very happy to work here in a small room, where I am close to my art.” Mr. Cong has an impressive resume; as a graduate of Shandong Academy of Fine Arts and now the General Manager and director of Israel’s ‘Yishuhuai’ gallery and the the ‘Temptress Moon’ society in Japan, he is very proud of his achievements. “My works had been purchased by Israeli and Japanese collectors at exhibitions in the US,
France, Germany, the UK, South Korea and Japan.” The name of his current exhibition is ‘Contemporary Sino-Japanese Works
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of Art,’ which shows his international influences on works of art commonly displaying two themes: Shanghai at night and women surrounded by roses. His works have a hint of abstract in that they use a layering technique with oil paints, which makes certain parts of his paintings literally stand out to give an almost 3D effect. When asked about what his paintings represent, Cong stressed the
significance of his pieces in representing times both past and present with beauty being the key theme. “My every painting is a world of emotional change - a combination of classical realism and modern aestheticism. And that is the vitality of my art.” Contemporary Sino-Japanese Works of Art. Bld. 17, Gallery 109, 50 Moganshan Lu.
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