Opening Reception
Friday, September 11, 7-9 pm
Artist Bio
Dalton Zheng (b. 1997, Fujian, China) is a figurative ink painter based in Richmond, VA, and currently an MFA candidate at the New York Academy of Art. He holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he later served as adjunct faculty in the Communication Arts Department. A recipient of the 2019 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, he has given live painting demonstrations at the museum. He has been invited to speak at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology (2023, 2025), and his practice has been recognized in Richmond Magazine. His work has been featured in multiple group exhibitions, and his pieces are held in a private collection in Athens, Greece.
Artist Statement
I work with ink on xuan paper, painting everyday scenes, and treat them as material for examining the physical behavior of the medium. Ink leaves a permanent mark; every stroke is final, and the paper absorbs each decision without revision. Brushwork is minimal and restricted: lines carry descriptive information while registering the speed and pressure of the hand. Empty areas are deliberate compositional elements, balancing the painted forms and structuring the visual field. I select and rearrange details from observation, editing out what is extraneous and amplifying what serves the pictorial logic. The process balances controlled strokes with accidental washes, testing the capacity of traditional ink techniques to render contemporary subjects. My interest lies in translating the ordinary into the formal language of ink, line, and paper – a language where precision coexists with unpredictability, and representation shares space with the material's own behavior. Every painting is an attempt to find pictorial equivalents for moments that would otherwise pass without notice, not to preserve them, but to examine why they hold visual interest.
Exhibition runs through Oct 10, 2026