Collective Z at Focus Art Fair

Collective Z is proud to present three voices working at the edges of memory, material, and form for our Focus Art Fair 2026 booth. Shaolin Zhong brings four decades of pioneering practice in dyed painting — a medium he has helped define on the international stage. Geuryung Lee returns to lithography and paint as instruments of memory and quiet emotion. Chris Chen renders chiaroscuro studies that wrestle with the dualities of first-generation Asian American life.

Shaolin Zhong (b. 1955, Shenyang) is a pioneering figure in contemporary dyed painting — an art form he has developed and championed through more than four decades of practice, scholarship, and publication. Working dye directly into cotton, he transforms textile into a painterly field — saturated, luminous, unrepeatable. His exhibitions span the From Lausanne to Beijing International Fiber Art Biennale, the First National Mural Exhibition, and ROTOR at the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris (2024).

Geuryung Lee is a New York–based visual artist whose practice moves between painting, printmaking, and installation. Her work treats memory and nostalgia as sites for the formation of identity — marks functioning as both language and residue, unfolding a space between presence and absence. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and dual MFAs in Painting & Drawing and Printmaking from SUNY New Paltz, with residencies at Chashama, Vermont Studio Center, the Chautauqua Institution, and Arte Studio Ginestrelle (Assisi).

Chris Chen is a New York–born artist working in charcoal on paper from his East Williamsburg studio. Largely self-taught, educated in finance and working by day as a bankruptcy consultant, Chen renders chiaroscuro studies that wrestle with the dualities of first-generation Asian American life. "My eyes and charcoal are tools and witnesses to what I can achieve, pulling textures from my very soul," he writes. "The chiaroscuro in my work emphasizes these dualities, a metaphorical silk-screening of memories."