Lu Cong (陆琮华) was born in Shanghai, in February 1978. He immigrated to the United States in 1989 at the age of 11. After graduating from the University of Iowa with degrees in Biology and Art in 2000, Lu chose to pursue portrait art over medicine. His early works were large and sensational, though they were painted with exaggerated melodrama and pathos, his keen insight and sensitivity towards his subjects were nonetheless evident. Between 2003 and 2007, Lu was recognized by a number of art publications as a notable emerging artist. Since then, Lu has developed a distinctive look that many has regarded as an original approach to figurative realism and is regarded as one of the most distinctive young portrait artists in the art world. His style pays homage to 18th Century Romantics, yet is unmistakably conceived in and relevant to the contemporary era. Center on the faces of his carefully chosen subjects, his paintings do not simply capture their physical or emotional likeness, rather they beckon to establish an authentic engagement – interaction that ensues when one comes face to face with the sensual, the inexplicable, and the unsettling.
Of his work Cong says, “My recent paintings depict young adults, at around the coming of age. I painted them in ways that I feel is most relevant to my experiences. I don’t make art with the overt intension to critique or dissent. However I am aware that what I feel to be authentic is often a reaction against what I feel isn’t. In this case, my approach to painting is in part shaped by my apathy towards the ‘intellectually respectable’ ways of painting; and in part provoked by commonplace and repetitive visuals of ‘mass media.’ My concern when painting is how real it is; not in its actual likeness, but in its immediacy and meaningfulness to myself.”
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