Zhang’s artistic performances are amazing in the literal sense of the word. Therefore, taking the opportunity to attend such performances is equivalent to slowly getting inside the history of contemporary art—the roots of which sprout from William Turner’s work. The forerunners of contemporary art identify light as a very powerful catalyst to attract attention. The Impressionists later reaffirmed this remark. Of course, we are speaking of artistic experiences quite distant from Zhang with regard to space and time, but the same type of artistic poetry link these experiences with Zhang. Capturing light in the most appropriate moment, and catching those colors in reality to render, through the mirror, a tangible image of gratitude. The result is a series of tremendously attractive works, with a definite core and many promising characteristics.
It is in this very moment that Zhang, fully dressed with mirrors, offers an additional key to reading his work. The reflected image encapsulates an entire universe of multi-leveled meanings. Mythology, literature, philosophy, psychology intersect in a peremptory introspection. A view of our own image mirrored by a polished surface is a frequent trigger of discomfort, as we do not recognize ourselves in what our eyes see. In this instance, Zhang departs from his own self to make available an opportunity for us to get closer to our own selves. Everything happens by incident—the artist walking through city streets, gathering people’s reactions as they cross his “glance”. Moments of great lyricism are also present, where the atmosphere and the “protective spirit” of the place are absorbed by the reflecting surface, and hereon projected back onto us fully. Zhang’s lyricism places itself before a city square, on a bridge, along the nave of a museum as a highly refined urban poetry.
Form is an additional constituent of Zhang’s work. It is another opportunity for him to trace back to the history of art, with plentiful experiences and researches. Here, we must remember that the dialog with figurative description emerges from the end of the line. Zhang makes this moment evident, while charging the very moment with his own experiences. He creates stylized human silhouettes, almost borrowing them from road signs, grafting them with a transitional mechanism. The artist strips himself “naked” through this transition in order to enter an anonymous silhouette, a shape that is limited in content and is, in the meantime, open to becoming the protean. Bystanders are also invited to share this experience, and indeed people accept the invitation with great curiosity. A transition in identity is thus carried out, followed by an annihilation and subsequent recovery of the self—as soon as one pulls out from these anonymous silhouettes. In the “mirror versus man” case, as well as in his latest works, Zhang investigates the possible opportunities afforded by physical and psychological projections.
To be conscious, to remember oneself, and not to be swept away by the despotism of one’s subjective thoughts—this is the power of awareness. To be attentive and present with balance, with a peaceful and understanding mind, be the experience pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, one is to remain a simple, casual witness.
The course of art history continues and is carried out in Zhang’s work with the subsequent melting away of the shape: the shapeless, matrix of informal art takes possession of these paintings created by water-and-ink brush technique. Water, deprived of its own shape, is the first real mirror for mankind to reflect and the symbol of the shapeless par excellence. Its vulnerability towards physical intrusion is a purely temporary condition.
Zhang presents the idea that mental streams cannot be stopped by a self-centered willpower. We often times lack intuition and a clear vision, because we are captives of our own selfish conditions. Reality is already present within ourselves, but we overlook it completely due to our blindness. We somehow continuously go through several experiences, but still have insufficient connections with these experiences, being only half awake amongst reality. Zhang offers his art to us, so that we could experience a domain of new possibilities, abandoning our habits. As he claims “ Change is the rule, for art and for life”.
The gallery space dedicated to Zhang’s solo exhibition is therefore an invitation to open a dialog with ourselves, a warning to the self-awareness in our own living—being, acting, thinking, all mental and emotional impulses—to which we do not pay the attention and respect due. Each natural element reminds us that we are living and thinking beings capable of interacting with reality, regardless of underlying complexities. What we do or do not accomplish during our lifetime triggers, consciously or unconsciously, an echo and an effect that generates a shock wave. We comply with the cause-effect law, simply because of our physical composition. But this is not all. We hide an infinite potential, a creative capacity capable of modifying the events, even if we are only standing still.
Mankind is the only kind of living being who, with an awareness of not being eternal, aims to create any kind of prosthesis, inside and outside of itself, attempting to stop the course of time, and to then take possession of time. Domination is innate at its core, and the chance of risk increases as one attempts to extend ones domination. This is when mankind becomes its own lover. This love is blind and greedy; it moves man away from his true self.
A self-withdrawal, nothing else exists…however, if we try to watch ourselves standing in front of a mirror, we become to think that we are no longer ourselves, that we are living in our reflected images and floating beyond our bodies. How could we blame Narcissus? The myth tells us about a very handsome young man, conscious of his beauty but unable to appreciate it with peaceful gratitude. His obsessive love is exclusively dedicated to his reflected image—a water pond will inevitably become his own death.
To know ourselves is a demanding path, where illusions in which we think we could believe and upon which we could rely are only reflections of what we prefer to see and follow. We pull away from and out of ourselves, wearing an identity of a fake “ego”, and we are forced to enter a certain type of “silhouette”, and to risk, day by day, to look closer into a sarcophagus.
Zhang is aware of all of this and, from inside his “silhouettes”, he laughs. He gets “naked” because he understands the “stereotype pressure” in our society, and he unmasks himself with just the same instrument that is utilized to mask oneself: he moulds and/or crushes mankind into a flat and two-dimensional shape deprived of any identity.
To watch ourselves is not to look inside ourselves—the invitation is clear—the re-appropriation of a three-dimensional human being must come from the steps mankind has accomplished, following the example of water, reluctant to any forced intrusion, gifted with the purity of showing itself to everybody in its own transparency, surpassing in its eternal state of being anything that might alter its temporary physical status.
- Sandro Orlandi
