Mizuma & One Gallery is to present ZHAO Na's solo show "Parallel Country" from September 3 through October 16, 2011.

In 2010 ZHAO Na took her Master's degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. As her debut solo show, 9 of her most recent pencil drawings will be revealed this time. As a stand-alone venue of artistic expression, pencil drawing has its unique values, as lines are used to convey the artist's profound sense of form, structure, rhythm, and aesthetic interest.

ZHAO Na has been particularly fond of pencils as materials to work with. The delicate lines are so striking that it is probably only with a "most pristine mind" that one can create such rich and yet clean images. With lines of various thickness and various inter-line distance, ZHAO Na manages to create a surreal world with various tones of black and white combined. This world is in parallel with the real one as known to us with all its familiarity, and yet is spiritually independent from the latter one. The eerie and curious images, as she shows us, are simultaneously familiar and strange. As such, ZHAO Na is able to freely transport herself between two different worlds and visualize on paper what is normally invisible to our naked eyes.

To ZHAO Na, the process of probing the world is also one of her gaining self-cognition. By putting thoughts into drawings, ZHAO Na makes her self-reflection observable, starting and restarting after each moment of self-renewal. This is supposedly the unending source of inspirations for her works.