ZHANG WEI

Zhang Wei Artworks

Zhang’s images question the boundaries of reality, often presenting portraits and tableaus with exaggerated features or absurdist elements. He draws from a range of sources, from film to historical documents and archival images.

Temporary Performers

Zhang’s ‘Temporary Performers’ series (2007–2010) depicts Chinese people of various ages, seated alone, in pairs, or in small groups. Some are seen to be half-submerged in white liquid. While seemingly individual, each figure’s face is digitally manipulated by the artist, who synthesises multiple faces to present the resulting portrait.

The sense of unease that pervades ‘Temporary Performers’ is perhaps most pronounced in the sub-series Fairy Tale (2008), which consists of portraits of school children. With deliberately edited vacant expressions and dark undereye shadows, Zhang’s Fairy Tale subjects reflect the artist’s questioning of social identities in Chinese society.

Artificial Theater

Zhang’s ‘Artificial Theater’ series comprises portraits constructed by hybridising the faces of real and fictitious figures – including the readily recognisable visages of Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, Angelina Jolie, and Steve Jobs, as well as those of ordinary Chinese people. Emerging from his earlier ‘Temporary Performers’ series, Zhang was inspired to produce this new body of work upon further consideration of the influence of mass media and celebrity culture on contemporary Chinese identity. With exaggerated features and an unnatural crispness that belie their artifice, the personas of ‘Artificial Theater’ reflect an exploration of alternative approaches to portraiture.

Puppet Archive

For his ‘Puppet Archive’ series, Zhang drew from sources including film stills, historical photographs and paintings, and the internet to create black-and-white documentary-style images that destabilise the viewer’s understanding of reality. In My Statue (2019), Hitler is apparently captured studying a model bust of himself within a vitrine, while in Mechanical Dolls (2019), two young girls stand in near-identical poses with their back to the camera, each with a mechanical right leg. Devoid of context or authenticity, Zhang’s ‘Puppet Archive’ photographs illustrate fictitious narratives in what the artist has called ‘a montage of pseudo-history’.

Exhibitions

Zhang Wei has presented work in solo and group exhibitions internationally.

Select solo exhibitions include Theater of Illusions, A2Z Art Gallery, Paris (2021); Artificial Theater – Act II, O2art, Beijing (2020); Empathy, Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an (2018); Artificial Theater, Centre de la Photographie, Geneva (2015).

Select group exhibitions include the Shanghai International Photography Festival (2020); Sunset on a Dead End: The Notorious and Their Inexplicable Modes of Existence, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2019); Beyond the Sphere of Reproduction, Städtische Galerie KUBUS (2017); China: Grain to Pixel, Monash Gallery of Art, Victoria (2016).

Website

Zhang Wei’s website can be found here.

Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022