Lu Shengzhong (born 1952) is a Chinese artist who specializes in the ancient Chinese art of paper cutting.
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Lu was born in the Dayuji village in Shangdong, China, in 1952. Shangdong has long been known for its paper cutting art culture. Lu’s father was a farmer where his mother was a house-wife, who was well known around the village for her paper cutting talents. As a child, Lu fell in love with the way his mother would create art with cut scraps of paper.
"My mother had a very skilled pair of hands. She made paper cuts, embroidered, drew floral decorations, decorated wedding rooms, cooked matou when visiting relatives and did many other things. These are all beautiful details of everyday life. I was fascinated by it and participated."
As Lu got older, his fascination for paper cutting began to fade. As a young adult he joined the army for a short while. After the army, he worked for a short period of time as a film projectionist. In the mid 1970’s he attended art school at Shangdong Normal University, and graduated in 1978 with a degree in Fine Arts. After Graduattion he later attended Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) in Beijing, China for his masters program in the early 1980s. During this time period, China’s art scene began a change from socialist realist paintings. His classmates began to discover rock & roll music, bleu jeans, jazz, as well as the art genre of Dada. Lu Shengzhong graduated from Central Academy of Fine Art in 1987, with a masters in folk art.
"With the ending of the Cultural Revolution, China opened its long-closed doors to the outside world. 'The moon in the West is brighter than the one in China.' The public tried to imitate the West, the model for those Chinese who were eager to succeed. It was a very interesting time but it did not, in my opinion, leave behind much of lasting importance. Artists, too, tried to copy the West in so many ways. … Thus in the mid-1980s, I walked away from the cultural confusion of the time and turned back to the villages, to traditional Chinese folk art."
After earning his masters, Lu began to travel through China’s hinterland. One of his memorable trips was the northern Shaanxi province, a rough area that’s known for its rough, arid terrain, as well as the poverty within the area. Lu embraced the culture, by watching the local peasant women create memorable shapes and objects out of paper. For example they would cut out, frogs, mice pomegranates, lotus flowers, rabbits, etc.
In 1988, Lu had his very first exhibition at China’s National Art Gallery. He turned the art gallery into a "temple filled with totem-like images", by using cutouts of footprints that were suspended in mid air, as well as silhouette patterns accompanied by illegible calligraphy. Lu’s display at China’s National Art Gallery caught the attention of local art critics, but Lu Shengzhong felt no sense of glory as he described his art as “a lonely struggle along a desolate path.” Lu later wrote a more detailed description stating:
“Exerting the utmost strength I squeezed out of a marketplace filled with contentious crowd, and found a silent, forgotten little path to walk on. Intrigued by unfamiliarity and longing, I followed it to retrieve original characteristics of humankind that have been filtered out by civilization, to summon images of lost souls in the polluted air, to understand the spiritual pursuit of mankind in its infancy, and to search for the deep connection linking my native land with the rest of the world. All my efforts are to nourish the ancient culture. Thus suddenly I gain confidence, because in my mind I have paved a path for today’s art.” (Lu Shengzhong: Book of Humanity: Empty Book 2005)
Within Lu Shengzhong’s early career as an emerging artist, he has entered many solo and group exhibitions between the late 1980s and mid 90’s including:
Lu bases the theme of his paper cutting around the dynamic life cycle of paper cutting. The theme is an old technique that sustains vitality through infinite recreation and variation. With the art of recreation and variation as a basic technique, the art itself becomes a way becomes the art of constant renewal, not only in the art but life as well. For instance the art was used in holidays, festivals, weddings, and funerals. These events mark certain passages within a person’s life. There are three basic elements in Lu Shengzhong’s artwork that he finds essential in the art of paper cutting.
The first element is the dynamic relationship between positive and negative forms, in which is constantly created in the art of paper cutting. Lu feels what’s so significant to this is the fact one cannot us positive or negative forms alone, but for them to be used together, as in a single piece of paper that creates a conceptual whole.
The second element is referred to as the materiality of paper cutting. First and foremost, the art of paper cutting always generates tension between two- dimensionality and three dimensionality, for the fact that a piece of paper is assumed to be two-dimensional for being such a flat surface. Regardless of the way paper is cut, it still has a volume, as well as a front and back. When Lu creates a piece, and attaches the paper cuts to aboard, he compares his work to a painting and a sculpture, he then begins to contest the relationship between the two art forms. Lu also feels that a paper cut also represents fragility, for the fact that paper is vulnerable to natural and human disasters. Fragility has been the theme and subject matter used in Lu Shengzhong’s artworks.
The third element in Lu Shengzhong’s work is the temporal, meditative nature of paper cutting. This refers back to when he had the conversation with a local peasant woman while visiting the Shaanxi province. Lu asked of her the thought process of the paper cuts she was creating, and she replied “nothing, there is nothing in my mind.” To interpret the answer, Lu begins to approach his paper cutting with creative processes, emotion, and rational thinking, at the same time makes doesn’t make him creative. What makes Lu Shengzhong, and the peasant woman so significant, is the fact that when they create a piece, they are expressing as well as releasing themselves with abstract visual forms.
Lu published a book in 2005 entitled The Book of Humanities, where he discusses as well as displays his past and present works. The book also employs Lu’s three elements behind paper cutting along with his philosophy towards his artwork in several volumes. Some of the books collage pages were scraps from actual pieces that Lu Shengzhong created. The collages in the book are of little red figures such as frog, paper people, and other various shapes.
Lu Shengzhong currently works as a professor at the very school where he earned his master’s degree, Central Academy of Fine Art, in the department of Research Institute for Folk Art Studies in Beijing. Lu teaches up to eight classes per semester, and is very enthusiastic and well involved with his students, in hopes that they will be the future for art