Mid Value is the second solo show of Zhang Wuyun at the 01100001 Gallery. As a painter born in 1981, Zhang Wuyun insists on turning the world around him into pictorial form through restrained brushstrokes and colors. The works to be presented at this exhibition feature different perspectives, so looking at these paintings, the viewers can visualize a painter sometimes looking up and sometimes down. The sky, the clouds, the airplane, the flying birds, or the fallen leaves and water under the bridge, all seem to tell us that the centerpiece has left, leaving merely the background. The landscape, however, at the mercy of the sense of form provoked by the painter’s unique brushstrokes and colors, has become the dominant part of the painting, building lots of context spaces of free entry, so these works become visual expressions that allow open interpretation.

The sceneries, telling of an artist who has been meditating on the common world around him, are not representations in their respective real contexts but what remains of the artist’s long observation in his consciousness and memory. The stress on perspective is directed at an actor who watches and experiences, and the viewer, in this case, will play the role as a virtual actor who not only appreciates and identifies but more importantly, participates in the particular context built by the painter, shuttling in the interplay of different spaces and subjects, as well as reviewing and experiencing his own context.

Zhang’s recent works have produced a series of entryways through which the paintings, instead of releasing the energy contained in the pictorial content, attract and gather the viewer’s attention so as to get him ready for a specific context. The restrained and the significantly impregnated brushstrokes, in combination with celadon and dark orange, guide the viewer and help to build these contexts. The craftsmanship is undoubtedly accurate and effective, forceful as a full bow and a purplish seed ready to sprout. The emotional reaction to the paintings generated by the brushworks and colors are kept in a state of mid-value which is certainly not absolute, but thanks to the leeway at both ends, is able to provide great guidance from this position, connecting the grand with the tiny, lending to the work autonomy and richness.

-01100001 Gallery

Image: © Zhang Wuyun
Courtesy of the artist and 01100001 Gallery