Cut | Off, the installation work displayed, is based on the artist’s project Things That I don’t Understand in 2011. This time, she mixes basic building materials like concretes and wires, and shapes them into cubes of various sizes to seal up all the windows and doorways so that the residential space has been forced to experience the physical transformation. By doing this, the artist has cut off the paths that human relies on to perceive and to get connected to the outside world, and further, to deemphasize or rather to question the necessity of social connection. Meanwhile, it suggests the exact position that modern men, who are overwhelmed by the external information, would stand on. It is her way to have a “closed” perspective towards the “openness” and “truth” in the modern life, and to view the world “at hand” with “distance”.

The paintings shown together this time, as a planar extension of the installation, remain expressions of emotion but within reason. ZHANG Ruyi keeps being rigorous throughout her painting. On the grid paper, she draws lines and matrixes repetitively, embedding various kinds of stiff and abstract figures from the natural world. By intentionally erasing the existence of sensitivity, she immerses her body and soul in the mechanical world. There, an individual in the social system is like dust floating in the universe, which is mysterious, weightless, tense and virtual.

Born in 1985 in Shanghai, ZHANG Ruyi did her master on Synthesize Material in academy of fine art, Shanghai University. She was awarded The Coroma Foundation Contemporary Art Scholarship (2010), LUO Zhongli Contemporary Art Scholarship (2012), and was the first- prize winner of Creative M50 Young Artist Award (2012). She has hold solo exhibitions at am Art Space (Shanghai), Muskmelon Man Commune (Shanghai), White Space (Beijing), and J Gallery (Shanghai). Also, she was part of the group exhibitions Revel by Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art (2013) and Creative M50 Young Artist Group Exhibition by M Space (Shanghai). ZHANG Ruyi currently lives and works in Shanghai.