The Symbolic Era of Scenes – Zhou Weihua’s Paintings By Yi Ying

Zhou Weihua’s paintings are full of imagination. They portray fictitious places with blue skies. Other objects appear to be set randomly. People, cars and skateboards are flying in the sky with elephants on the ground. This seems like a hyper-realistic world. However, the paintings are not hyper-real. Zhou Weihua is full of joy, like a child who does not want to grow up or say goodbye to his childhood imagination.

It would be stretching it to say that Zhou Weihua shows a single, specific concept of modern life because there is no specific concept, only specific figures. When painting these figures, Zhou Weihua uses great technical skills, which comes from his studies at art academies. But he does not paint typical “oil paintings,” although he uses the medium. His images are full of colour (unlike classical oil paintings with harmonious grey tones), and he does not use purely graphic pop art. Oil painting technique covers his visual quotation of the images as he points to popular culture and subculture. Zhou Weihua’s artwork hides popular culture behind a crowd of representative images. When translating public symbols, the paintings represent modern things. His modern landscapes are visual environments of the contemporary world, especially relating to consumers, advertisements, the media and cultural environments.

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