Zeng Fanzhi: Portrait.[Photo provided to China Daily]

In Zeng's works there is a recurring care of people's uncertainties of social realities and their attempt to break away from the chaos of everyday life.

When Zeng studied at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, a lot of young artists were immersed in the enduring influence of '85 avant-garde movement. He, however, wanted to keep a distance with the movement: He skipped the focus on grand historic narratives that was then popular among many painters, but portrayed many people living on the social bottom, revealing their anxieties, according to Pi Li, a Beijing-based critic, scholar and curator.

Zeng's many recent works were created with a unique approach: He uses one brush to paint a subject matter or a landscape on the canvas and then another brush to produce messy lines above the subjects.

Underlying his strokes, Zeng pays tribute to the classical Western art and also, he returns to the classics of the modernism movement to create new classics.