ZHANG Zheng: Last Night, the Dark Sun Flickered: Curated by GAO Yumeng
“...I wouldn't preconceive a state or result, but rather, I'm more fascinated by that moment in which personal experience collides with the subconscious during the process.”
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to launch Zhang Zheng's individual project Last Night, the Dark Sun Flickered on March 2, 2024, featuring a series of sculptures and installation works recently created by the artist.
Zhang Zheng approaches creation through imagination and intuition to understand and reinterpret reality. He transforms interpretations and misinterpretations of past experiences and memories into deep, symbolic language, exploring and expressing the fluidity of the complex relationship between humans and their desire, as well as the deep archetypes of the collective unconscious.
In Zhang's view, "desire," as the motif of this series, does not point to a longing for a fixed object but rather a dynamic, creative force that is embedded in the cultural genes and consensus of human society, aimed at the wholeness and fulfillment of life. He frequently employs the imagery of snakes in his work, combining them with myths, literature, and religious references as metaphors to touch upon the symbols in the collective unconscious of the viewer—suspicion and temptation, sin and destruction, wisdom and protection, change and rebirth.
The ancient symbol of the Ouroboros, also appears in Zhang Zheng's works. He combines the image of the Ouroboros with a type of readymade used by Duchamp in "Bicycle Wheel" (1913), responding once again to the paradox existing between context and the generation of meaning.
"Ouroboros," from the Greek οὐροβόρος ὄφις, meaning "tail-devouring snake," forms a circle as it continually consumes its own tail. The Ouroboros symbolizes the infinite and the eternal return of the life cycle: self-conception, self-production, self-nourishment, and self-consumption. It represents the conflict between life and death, as well as the "beginning and end under the ceaseless law of eternity." Carl Jung considered this symbol to reflect the human psychological archetype of self-reflection and realization, pointing to the cyclical and holistic development of the individual psyche, and the endless exploration, transcendence, and renewal of life themes.
The snake regenerates itself while consuming itself, its excrement also serving as its food. Appearing as a binary opposition of subject and object, this continuous state of motion also points to the cyclical relationship in artistic creation between the artist as creator, the objective reality as the subject of representation, the artwork as creative output, and the constantly enriching and renewing artistic experience, techniques, images, etc. In recent works, Zhang Zheng has gradually moved away from traditional sculptural language and composition, partially surrendering the subjectivity of creation to objective objects. He intentionally omits textual molding and sculpting, increasingly choosing readymades with special significance as creative materials, visually integrating the natural texture and color of the readymades, while adopting a pseudo-naïve, clumsy treatment in form, material, and color, allowing the natural landscape and objective objects themselves to hold special explanatory significance. Archetypes are thus presented in a powerful, symbolic form, revealing the common psychological and spiritual experiences of humanity.
This reflection on materials and representation originates from the artist's immediate contemplation of social environmental changes and technological developments. As artificial intelligence gradually shifts from a cliché that artists tend to avoid to a tool and technological means that will inevitably influence future paradigms, will artistic creation fall into a cycle of self-training, self-development, self-feeding, and self-production like the Ouroboros? And how will the meanings and values deeply cultivated by artists be defined?
"Dreaming in the dark sun, flickering in yesterday," chaos of time, experience, and imagination intertwine, with brilliance rising in decline. The artist's creations will become fragments that construct civilization, while their thoughts will continue to flow forward.
