Art Collection

Zhou Brothers

Travel Europe, My Memory
(original hand-embellished gicleé)
Acquired: 2001
Location: Stairway landing

The Zhou brothers, Shan Zuo and Da Huang, leaders in China's art renaissance, left their homeland in 1986 in order to pursue an international career. Their gallery is a former ballroom located in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood. Here, the brothers paint and create simultaneously and as a result, have become major figures in the international contemporary art world. They have exhibited actively in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Their works, filled with Eastern motifs and Western abstractions, are at the same time both primitive and modern. Reds, blacks and whites in rich textures are prominent in their works, while lines lead the viewer through the surface of their paintings.

Gicleé comes from a French word for ‘spray of ink.' A gicleé work uses state-of-the-art computer technology to reproduce images via a high-resolution inkjet printer. The hand embellishment adds dimension to the paintings.

When asked about their work, Da Huang said, "When we see an empty canvas, the image will become a New World. But what kind of New World? We have only an excited feeling. Our feeling is expressed on the canvas."