Artwork: Flowers NO.02
Artist: Jiang Zhi
Year: 2010
Media: Archival Inkjet Print
Size: 105×133cm
Edition: 2/5-5/5+2AP
Price: RMB 66,000
ELEGY (series) 2010
Jiang Zhi’s Elegy series has profound implications. In Chinese, when people talk about “light”, they tend to describe it as “lines of light”. The Chinese forge an intimate connection between “light” and “line”. However, when Jiang Zhi visualises “light” in the form of “lines” and presents different types of flesh pierced by these “lines of light”, viewers feel a kind of penetrating pain instead of a warm radiation.
According to Jiang, the two beams of light “are not to illuminate but to bestow power, to stab and to drag…” The series is brimming with a sense of heaviness as if doomsday approaches. Without the need to replace those animals or parts of animals with the image of human beings, viewers already feel the silent presence of social observation.
(A Journey onto the Retina, by Chen Shuzhe)
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jiang Zhi
Jiang Zhi (b. 1971, Hunan, China) graduated from the China Academy of Art in 1995. Working with a wide range of media including photography, painting, video and installation as well as fiction and poetry as an important part of his artistic output, Jiang engages with contemporary, social and cultural issues. He consciously positions himself at the intersection of poetics and sociology, weaving mundane social and personal experiences into his works.
As one of the most diversified artists in China today, Jiang Zhi has had two major solo retrospectives at OCAT Shenzhen (2016) and Times Museum in Guangzhou (2012). His work was also shown in international institutions and biennials, including “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA, 2017); the 9th Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China, 2012); the 4th Guangzhou Triennial (Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou, China, 2012); “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China” (ICP and Asia Society, New York, USA, 2004); “Zone of Urgency”, the 50th Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy, 2003); and “P_A_U_S_E”, the 4th Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, South Korea, 2002). Jiang was awarded the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) in 2000; the Academic Award of Reshaping History (Chinart from 2000 to 2009) in 2010; and the Credit Suisse Today Art Award in 2012.
Jiang currently lives and works in Beijing, China.
ABOUT THE GALLERY
X Contemporary Art (Changsha)
X Contemporary Art (XCA) was established in 2019. Focusing on contemporary art, XCA is one of the leading galleries in the center and south of China. The gallery launches 4-6 exhibitions each year, choosing important Chinese artists from different art forms.
ENQUIRE