Zhou was born in 1966 in Shanghai where he still lives and works. He attended the art school of Fine Arts at Shanghai University. Zhou Tiehai’s conceptual projects represent the artist’s vengeful attitude towards the egotist art market. His work has the power to amaze and provoke, is the result of a host of strategies that combine antagonism and sincerity. The key ingredients that drive Zhou Tiehai’s unsettling yet amusing practice include: appropriating classical imagery, generating ironic projections, proclaiming laconic yet heartfelt discourse, and actively subverting painterly craft. He takes on the role of both artist and patron, as many of his airbrush paintings are rendered by assistants under his supervision. He permits himself to ‘play’ with art’s historical heritage by making paintings that are simultaneously self-aware and self-abnegating. Virtuosic and pop culture are both present within a single canvas. He manipulates acclaimed magazine covers for his own purposes and articulates the notion of ‘artistic agency’ within current conditions of the art world and global economy. He makes self-promotional images that subvert the establishment notion of how artists should look and behave.
