ZHANG Mengmeng: Out of Place: Curated by WANG Yaoli
"My paintings mostly come from my memory. The brain is a fragile container where we store our experiences and thoughts in chaos, then extract clues to fabricate what we call reality. However, this container is not reliable; it's manipulated by our emotions, desires, and fears, turning remembered scenes into images somewhere between imagination and reality after fermentation. I use certain moments from the past as pivots, not trying to reproduce them but exploring universal emotions through the most personal memory images as codes."
—Mengmeng Zhang
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition Out of Place by artist Mengmeng Zhang from April 6 to May 6, 2024. Curated by Wang Yaoli, the exhibition features over ten recent paintings by the artist.
In recent years, Mengmeng Zhang has focused on memory-image and psychogeography. Starting from personal experiences, she delicately and sensitively observes the fluctuations of her internal emotions in external environments. Through painting, she combines the scenes and feelings retained in memory with her current understanding, intuitively depicting a state between reality and imagination.
Within the intricate and subtle dynamics of intimate relationships, the romanticism and contradictions of human nature induce both infatuation and harm among individuals. Zhang captures these slight and fluid emotional displacements in her works, manifesting them in ambiguous yet discernible imagery. She adeptly employs emotionally charged colors, mottled brushstrokes, and dynamic lines to sculpt highly stylized character portraits. Through the figures' expressions, gestures, and actions, she evokes narrative imagery that is difficult to articulate.
In terms of artistic style, influenced by American abstract expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler, Zhang continuously experiments with altering the characteristics of oil paints. She creates surfaces reminiscent of ink-like thinness and transparency, achieving complexity in color through layers of overlapping blocks. Simultaneously, to accommodate the spontaneity of the painting process, she selects unbleached calico fabric from India as a substitute for Western classic linen canvas. This natural cotton fabric, untreated and unprocessed, is often used by minority people for traditional textile printing. Drawing support from its quick-absorbing effects, Zhang can swiftly capture the bodily movements corresponding to her current emotions, infusing the creative process with a "no regrets" attitude towards decision-making.
