Once the youngest member of the Star Art Group—the first modern art movement in China—Zhao Gang left the country in 1983, to study in the Netherlands and then New York. He returned to China in 2006, bringing along his new cultural identity. What did he find? A developing modern-art landscape, which deeply affected him. His subsequent paintings fuse cultures, images from the Cultural Revolution, his childhood icons, and western symbols. Is Zhao a native or a newcomer? —E.C.