LIVEN ZENG is a young artist and curator active in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, and Europe. He graduated from the Printmaking Department of the Bari Academy of Fine Arts in Italy and is a member of the Italian National Artists Association. He serves as the Global Creative Director of UNOART, which is headquartered in Hong Kong and has branches in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Paris, and Milan. UNOART is committed to art collaboration and cross-border brand cooperation, promoting the brand's global influence.

The IP image CUBBY created by him has collaborated with international sports brand Bond Pickleball and received attention and coverage from international media such as Vogue, Fashion Bazaar, and The Globe and Mail. Zeng Liwen's art works have been widely recognized and exhibited on multiple international art platforms, including the US Consulate General in Guangzhou and the Italian National Art Association. He also won a bronze award at the Mona Lisa International Invitation Festival in Italy.

In addition to creating, he also actively curates exhibitions, serving as a co curator for the Shanghai International Illustration Festival and planning the Guangzhou Fangsuo Rongbaozhai Woodblock Watermark Exhibition and the Central Academy of Fine Arts Rabbit Year Prints Exhibition. His curation and artistic practice span across multiple countries, dedicated to promoting international art exchange and cross-border cooperation.

In March 2025, he was invited to join the Asian Art Association Singapore (Illustration and Comics).

As a trendy artist, I have always believed that popular art and spectral illustration are the "genetic code of contemporary visual culture", whose essence lies in reconstructing the relationship between the public and art through visual symbols. This creative language not only carries the avant-garde of artistic expression, but also has the power to penetrate circles - just as Takashi Murakami combined the flatness of ukiyo-e with the commercial logic of Pop Art, creating a globally recognizable "super flat aesthetics" that spread the sunflower totem from art galleries to luxury display windows and street fashion signs.

Popularity: Visual colonization of daily scenes

Spectral illustrations dissolve the boundary between art and life through the visual bombardment of high frequency and fragmentation. For example, in the co branded series of commercial brands, symbolic cartoon images can appear on sneakers, coffee cups, and digital billboards at the same time. This cross media coverage allows art to penetrate into people's lives like air. The collaboration between Takashi Murakami and LV for over a decade is a typical case - he transformed the seriousness of art galleries into carnival like patterns on handbags, making luxury consumption a carrier of art dissemination.

Popularity: Accelerator of Subculture

The core competitiveness of trendy illustration lies in "defining generational identity with visual symbols". The anime head portrait in social media, the limited design of the fashion play blind box, and the acid aesthetics of the main vision of the music festival all build the aesthetic consensus of young groups through exaggerated shapes and highly saturated colors. For example, Lexkon Liu's illustration that combines Cantonese opera headwear with cyber mechanical elements has become a totem of local youth culture and has also been transformed into a globally circulated digital asset through the NFT market.

Commerciality: The symbiotic experiment of art and capital

Pop art is essentially a 'carefully designed commercial conspiracy'. Brand owners need illustrators to transform their products into emotional symbols, while artists use commercial projects to expand their influence - just as when I designed the main visual for a beauty brand, I needed to transform the product's functional points into narrative fantasy scenes that not only meet market communication needs but also conceal surreal metaphors in my personal creations. This game relationship is just like Andy Warhol said, 'Good business is the best art.'.

Commerciality is never the enemy of art, but a catalyst for reconstructing the dimensions of creation. When Takashi Murakami's "727" sold for 100 million yen at auction, it was not only an artistic value, but also a pricing experiment of cultural symbols by the commercial system. The ultimate mission of trendy art may be to enable art museums and convenience stores to share the same visual grammar, and to build an aesthetic utopia that everyone can touch in the wave of consumerism.

His creation of IP-CUBBY has collaborated with international sports brand Bond Pickleball, attracting international media coverage and love——
Vogue
BAZAAR Fashion Bazaar
Google News
Global Post: Canada Edition
US Finance: Barchart.com
Digital Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company Channel 28
Fox Broadcasting Company Channel 40

Exhibition and Award Experience:

2024/04 Winner of the Art Project of the US Consulate General in Guangzhou. 2023/12 Artist in attendance at the Santa Maria Art Week hosted by the Italian National Art Association. 2023/11 Artist in attendance at the Florence Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition hosted by the Italian National Art Association. 2023/11 Personal Interview with Artist in the Italian National Art Association. 2022/1 Invited to judge at the Asia Pacific Youth Art Competition. 2021/12 Member of the Potala Palace Resident Creation Research Team. 2020/5 Participated in the FANSPACE Art Exhibition hosted by the Science and Education Department of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Italy at the FunspaceArt Museum in Rome. 2019/6 Invited to participate in the Mona Lisa International Invitation Festival in Italy and received recognition. Bronze Award 
 2018/3 Awarded as a finalist at the Salento International Design Festival in Italy 
 2016 Participated in the Francesico Artists' Curatorial Group at PERUGIA, Italy

Curatorial experience:

2024/11 Shanghai International Illustration Festival Co Curator 
 2022/12 Guangzhou Fangsuo Rongbaozhai Wooden Watermark Exhibition and Central Academy of Fine Arts Rabbit Year Printmaking Exhibition 
 2020/06 7th China Illustration Biennial/(China Station) Global Illustration Industry Conference