Artist Zeng Fanzhi portrays life amid a drastically changing China

Like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other great contemporary painters of our time, Zeng Fanzhi is an artist whose working process can almost be compared with performance art. Catch the maestro in action, and you'll find him going all-out while he paints.

Hopping on and off an elevated platform that lifts him high up to the centre of a giant, nearly two-storey-high canvas, Zeng drips, brushes and splashes paint to create spontaneous and chaotic strokes.

But as the pigments and curves come together, what unfolds are works of art that provoke thinking and resonate with emotions.

"Painting to me is meditation," Zeng says. "It's enjoyment, not suffering."

Born in Wuhan, Hubei province in 1964, Zeng is now one of the most globally recognised Chinese contemporary artists and the most expensive living Asian artist.

Sought after by collectors, Zeng's works continue to score astronomical prices at international auction houses. The Last Supper - a 2001 oil painting based on Leonardo da Vinci's work of the same title - was sold for HK$180.4 million at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2013.

Acclaimed also among art scholars, Zeng has exhibited his works in prestigious institutions across the globe, including Paris' Musée d'Art Moderne, Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany, and Acquavella Galleries in New York.

Last year, Zeng collaborated with Louvre Museum's curator Henri Loyrette on a set of four paintings exploring the ties between classical art and contemporary art. His painting titled No 4 - juxtaposing Eugène Delacroix's famous Liberté Guidant le Peuple with other romanticism masterpieces - was exhibited in Louvre's Denon Hall in October last year.

The full collection travelled to ShanghART Beijing in March this year - the first solo exhibition for the artist in mainland China in five years.