Zeng Popular Among Chinese & International Art Collectors.

With his work still in high demand among Asian and Western collectors, and a high-profile solo exhibition set to launch at the Gagosian Gallery in London, leading Chinese contemporary artist Zeng Fanzhi is at the top of his game. Remaining popular — and indeed gaining popularity — as a blue-chip artist in the wake of the global financial crisis, Zeng’s paintings continue to reliably sell in the millions of dollars even as Chinese buyers become more discriminating at auction both at home and abroad.

Last month, five out of the six works by Zeng up for auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong found buyers, with three handily exceeding high estimates and two butting up against their high estimates. Selling for a combined total of HK$20.6 million (US$2.66 million), despite greater propensity among Hong Kong and mainland Chinese buyers to pick and choose, and bid for increasingly scarce historical works, Zeng remains one of the most in-demand contemporary artists at auction in Asia.

But along with Zeng’s notoriety as a blue-chip artist, he is also known as a lover of all things luxury. This week, British GQ interviews the renowned sophisticate, discussing his work as well as his interest in the good life. As Zeng puts it in the article:

I am very curious about fashion, about style, especially in the Nineties, because at that time everything was new to us. Before the Nineties in China, there were virtually no fashion magazines here and the fashion magazines that we got were usually out of date, and some were more than a year old. At that time those magazines were very new and we were very curious about it all, because we didn’t have the opportunity to go abroad and see what things were like for ourselves. Now, gradually, we have started to have many more choices.

You come to a point where there are so many choices that you don’t know how to make a choice.