Opening｜Zhang Lei: Floating Down a Nightly River

PIFO Gallery presented Zhang Lei: Floating Down a Nightly River on May 16. This exhibition provides a very first survey of Zhang Lei's practice between 2010 and 2018. The exhibition will last until July 1.

Zhang Lei has been living on Jiang Xin Zhou, an island in the Yangzi River in Nanjing for seven years. During this time he has seen the huge transformation of the island, witnessed the destruction of homes and experienced the falling-apart of communities. All this had to give way to the construction of new developments and continues to live on as ghosts in the works by Zhang Lei.

Entering the stream of the artist′s massive exhibition of 173 drawings and prints the audience gets carried away by the current of the almost hallucinogenic imagery. What washes ashore are pictures of dark landscapes, buildings in ruins and of people in agony. Memories bubble back up from the waters, like an old jacket that fell into the waves and went under, only to be found downstream sticking on a branch close to the riverbank. The artist′s grandmother is holding a child. Nightmarish animals inhabit the dark nights and a funeral party keeps marching …  such are the subjects of Zhang Lei′s works: Dark and dense and dreary, but of an emotional impact that is impossible to resist. He reminds us of a humanity that cannot bewashed away by a new era, no matter how much water flows down the Yangzi.

Zhang Lei uses his craft quite skillfully on small format paintings, drawings and prints. Especially mesmerizing are his monotypes – fresh paint is applied onto a copper plate of which but a single print can be made – appearing in the reverse. The effect is almost like looking at the world from the other side of the mirror – a trope found very often in surrealist art and literature. Looking inward and discovering the secrets of our minds has been a revolution shredding bourgeois culture of the 19^th century and paving the way for diverse practices in art and life.

The exhibition is an immersive experience forany audience – gloomy and dark, the images seem to be capable of inhaling theviewer, engulfing him/her like a movie, hurrying the spectator from one image to the next, who sometimes in sheer horror, sometimes in plain bewilderment marvels at the drawings utterly incapable of turning away the gaze. What is the power behind the works? – It is the world behind the mirror, a world in which we do not recognize ourselves anymore and a world that is inhabited by half-beings, ghosts and other memories to a universe beyond. Imperceptible to the plain sight, we are all, more or less, affected by this world, which is partly scary, partly a relief from a purely rational world of efficiency and the reign of the renminbi. The artist uses his images as shield and armor against two things –firstly against the invasion of capital onto the deepest of human feelings and, simultaneously, against the ghosts from the past, present and future, that are threatening to haunt us. Each image therefore grants access to the other world and serves and apotropaic purpose at the same time.

Zhang Lei is a young artist well-renowned for his skills in drawing and printmaking as well as the mystical and almost surreal expression of his art, which is sometimes reminiscent of Goya′s famous graphic suite “Los Desastres de la Guerra”, but also of configurations very much like Max Ernst′s surrealist drawings that are sometimes reaching into painterly abstraction.

 Installation view

Photo: Lv Wenzhi

 JINGART艺览北京 

 参展艺术家名单 

吉莲?·艾尔斯 Gillian Ayres

谭平 Tan Ping

康海涛 Kang Haitao

恩里科·?巴赫 Enrico Bach

章剑 Zhang Jian

王川 Wang Chuan

 重要日期及时间 

藏家预览（仅凭邀请函）

2018年5月17日 14:00-19:00

2018年5月18日 13:00-16:00

开幕

2018年5月18日 16:00-21:00

公众开放 

2018年5月19－20日 11:00-18:00 

博览会场地

北京劝业场（廊房头条17号）

参考阅读：偏锋新艺术空间参展首届JINGART艺览北京博览会｜展位号 3F-02

关于画廊   About Gallery

偏锋新艺术空间成立于2006年，是中国专注于抽象艺术研究与发展的主要画廊。坚持对中国当代艺术进程的洞察以及对欧洲战后艺术大师的探索，并在两者的对话与碰撞中寻找各种可能的艺术力量。偏锋深信艺术的体验产生于一个又一个的变革中创造的新世界。艺术家的作品，正是探索世界的第三只眼睛。对于收藏家，我们为其提供专业知识，鼓励他们发掘个人独特的视角，只因两者的充分结合，才能构建卓越的收藏。我们希望更多的藏家可以秉持鉴赏家的心态，更深入的理解亚洲与西方的抽象艺术，以及欣赏画廊发掘、重塑并坚信的艺术家。

PIFO Gallery was founded in 2006. Which is China's premier gallery to present abstract art. PIFO brings together the works of contemporary Chinese artists with European post-war masters. At PIFO we believe that the experience of art is profoundly transformative. Seeing the world differently through the works of artists is an inspiration. We encourage our collectors to develop their individual vision and share our expertise in art to help them build excellent collections. The goal is to spread connoisseurship for Asian and Western abstraction in art and deepen the understanding and appreciation for the artists that we (re-)discovered and believe in. 

媒体/图片垂询 Press enquiries/images

郭萌萌 Mengmeng guomengmeng@pifo.cn

T: +86 10 59789562-8005

其他垂询 All other enquiries

杨大宇 Dayu Yang dayu@pifo.cn

M: +86 13810040162