The Shanghainese painter, best known over the past twenty years for his expressionist paintings, has been gaining critical acclaim and exposure for his new body of photography-based works. Furthering in a long tradition of artists exploring the possibilities found between painting and photography, Liang Weizhou’s photographic works can be seen as a direct evolution from his earlier roots in painting. Now empowering traditional photography with various techniques of photo montage, selective coloring, painting and digital retouching, the photographs of Liang Weizhou offer the viewer an abstract and dreamlike aesthetic that can often only be found in painting itself.

As evident in several of his earlier paintings from the 1990’s, Liang Weizhou has regularly explored the visual and conceptual relationship between painting and photography. Occasionally going so far as painting self-portraits with a camera and tripod on his canvas, it is clear the medium of photography and the contemplation of its ability to capture the myriad details before the artist’s eyes has always been present in Liang Weizhou’s conceptualization and realization of his artwork. After continued exploration and experimentation of the photographic image and process, Liang Weizhou has now clearly discovered his own visual language of interweaving his painting aesthetics with the continuing theme and subject matter of the often isolated and existential ordinary and intimate still life interiors. This can be seen in his photographs depicting a single hanging light bulb or an electrical socket, as well as the painterly and poetic landscapes found in his photographs from the nature reserve on Chongming Island, or in photographs such as “Small Fishing Boat” from Yunnan Province.