EXHIBITIONSGenealogy Study of Artists No. 15 Zhang Hui On Painting

Genealogy Study of Artists No. 15
Zhang Hui On Painting
2023.08.27 – 2023.10.18

Start Museum is pleased to present a new exhibition, “Genealogy Study of Artists No. 15 Zhang Hui On Painting,” on view from August 27th to October 18th, 2023. Zhang Hui was one of the main participants in the “Post-Sense Sensibility” – an important contemporary art movement in China at the beginning of this century. He graduated from the Department of Stage Design at the Central Academy of Drama, and was recognized by the public for his drama and performance practice in the early days of his career.

Beginning in 2007, Zhang Hui began to transform his practice from theater to painting. Over the past ten years, the identity of the artist as a painter has become more and more clear, while the characters and spaces of the theater continue to appear in his paintings. In recent years, Zhang Hui has boldly carried out research and exploration on the boundaries of painting. He retrospectively walked on and considered the “Middle East Railway” that runs through the land of Northeast China and bore witness to much of China’s modern history. Many figures, objects, and spaces along this railroad have become the main subjects of his paintings. Zhang Hui takes his walking as a clue to provide a personal and artistic understanding of the process of modernization. The 15 paintings on display respond to the three progressive elements, “reality,” “planning and transformation,” and “new reality,” presenting Zhang Hui’s profound thinking as an experiencer and observer of the times.

This exhibition will take Zhang Hui’s latest painting creations as a study case. After deliberating the basic elements of painting (such as color, structure, subject, and shape), Zhang Hui has brought his painting back to a state that can be called “clumsy”, that is, consciously keeping a relative distance from so-called “beauty”. Raising new questions about the aesthetics and logic of the current consensus may be one of the most distinctive features of Zhang Hui’s art.