Zhang Biying graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2008, and in 2011 she graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston in affiliation with Tufts University in Medford USA with MA degree.
The feeling of the Cultural collision between east and west during she was in the United Sates, impelled the artist to explore the life experiences, emotions and memories of people in cities. Tradition and modernity, privacy and public space, violence and fear, the history of society and memories of individual agglomerated to be different images appeared to us. Gazing at the circumstances that seems to be very familiar even be accustomed aroused a feeling of alienation and strange. Who am I – the old philosophy proposition is forward again by Zhang Biying’s personal visual narratives.
This is the first solo exhibition of Zhang Biying in China which features video and paintings, covered her typical works in recent years, reflected the status of the artist comprehensively.
Zhang Biying: Readme
I make art about human life experiences, memory, and perception. I explore how these concepts relate to my place of residence in China and the United States. I question whether people and the places where they live are dispensable or whether the two cannot be separated. I am also fascinated to study the perceptions we hold that align us with mainstream society or direct us towards a physical or mental state of marginalization.
I am interested in the ways that history and personal memory intersect in visual narratives. I paint pictures of emotional situations. My paintings explore a zone that fuses familiar landscapes with a sense of alienation. My paintings explore loss, displacement, and anxiety. In my current series, I am also interested in the energy and power of medium and color. I use bright colors like neon orange, pink, and blood reds. I paint landscapes and cityscapes with mattresses as a central theme. In my work, the mattresses become characters with personal memory and a social history. They are set in public and private worlds simultaneously. The beds are sometimes placed in front of old temples, sculptures, demolished machines, highways and sewage tunnels. It's my hope that the viewer can identify with the mattresses as though they were living beings. The beds are fragile and must make their way through a landscape of threatening events. In several paintings, the beds appear as if they were pulled from a private bedroom and exposed to the freezing night highway. I am interested in the relationship between comfort, despair, and purpose. I hope the audience can relate to my work while considering their own experience and values. I hope my work can be a starting point for discussion about who we are and how we fit into a world that is forever entangled in conflict, contrast, comfort, despair, and an enduring hope for the future.
About the exhibition
Duration: May. 8 – Jun.22, 2013
Location: Beyond Art Space
Address: 798 East Street, 798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 China
Tel: 86-10-59789561／59789579
Courtesy of the artist and Beyond Art Space.
