Vivien Zhang's paintings present a cultural and geographical fluidity which interrogates the palimpsestic nature of contemporary culture and the paradoxes of our information age. As a digital native, Zhang assumes the role a passive recipient in an ever-increasingly digitally mediated world, and makes apparent the fragmented and sporadic ways in which we consume information.
Read MoreZhang collates motifs from personal and collective shared experiences and manifest them in various combinations in her paintings. These motifs are often derived from multiple contexts and cultures, or share properties of ambiguity. Assembled in the space of her canvases, the motifs collide and defy their origin interpretations, generating open networks and 'alternative landscapes' for an imagined generation of third-culture (individuals who were raised in a culture other than that of their parents' or the culture of their country of nationality), digital inhabitants. Examples include the mathematical shape Gömböc, Central Asian kilims, 'manicules' found in early European manuscripts, and spiral columns from Baroque churches.
Vivien Zhang (b. 1990, Beijing) is a London-based artist and grew up in China, Kenya and Thailand. She received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 2014, after completing her undergraduate at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London in 2012.
Vivien Zhang's recent solo exhibitions include New Peril, TANK Shanghai, Shanghai (2020); Soft Borders, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2020); Codescape, Long March Space, Beijing (2018); Uzumaki, House of Egorn, Berlin (2018). Her works have been displayed in numerous group exhibitions, including After Image, Mamoth, London (2020); Echo Chamber, Plus-One Gallery, Antwerp (2019); and Digital Natives (with Thomas van Linge), The RYDER, London (2017). Zhang is the recipient of the Abbey Award 2016-17 at the British School at Rome and the Chadwell Award 2014-15.
Text courtesy Pilar Corrias.
