Kiang Malingue is pleased to present at its Hong Kong space Seeking traces, an exhibition of recent paintings by Zheng Zhou.

Zheng Zhou’s 2024 exhibition Spanish grilled fish at Kiang Malingue’s Hong Kong space continued the artist’s fascination with multifaceted, uncanny characters: his figures appear blurred, often rendered as simplified silhouettes, while layers of colour, decidedly saturated or subtly muted, weave these ethereal characters into profoundly alluring, vibrant environments. The current exhibition showcases the artist’s radical shift towards abstraction in recent years: rectangular colour blocks emerge irregularly as a recurring motif across multiple works, charting elementary chromatic networks through vibrant or deep hues like titanium white, scarlet, violet, and cobalt blue. In this new series, the mystifying narratives found in Zheng Zhou’s previous works give way to unrestrained rhythms: sweeping colour blocks cover the canvas like billowing brocade, producing a visual experience that is intricately layered and variegated.

The diptych Spring in the south (2025) is exemplary of Zheng Zhou’s recent shift toward abstraction: The large-scale canvas is fragmented into multiple loose clusters by minute, vibrant colour blocks, dispelling any coherent narrative formed by human movement, natural landscapes, or light and shadow. Instead, the organic play of stacked colour blocks builds a delicate and enthralling labyrinth. The seemingly flat space is guided by multiple threads of purple and green, revealing an immense constellation of compositional potentials. The triptych Seeking traces among the deep blossoms (2025) further employs colour as space: colours become each other’s frames or screens; parallel strokes of wild brushwork stabilise precarious gravitational relationships; a few hastily sketched figures once again hint at incorporating milieus of uncanny depth—amidst the interplay of intrepid and tenuous strokes, Zheng Zhou’s compositions invite viewers to seek traces and lose themselves within.

Works such as Secret passage to hidden depths (2025) and A boy (2025) are reminiscent of Zheng Zhou’s iconic landscape paintings, focusing on an isolated figure that is on the verge of becoming indistinguishable. Purely abstract compositions like In water (2025) and Nostalgia 3 (2025), on the other hand, rely on delicately balanced palettes. These pieces either underscore Zheng Zhou’s enduring fascination with natural forms, or resemble some sophisticated endgame of go, transforming viewers into players whose involvement is poignantly at stake.