Ultima, an upcoming solo exhibition by Zhang Ji that showcases the artist’s latest series of works, titled The Skin of Truth and Ultima, with a case study approach. The artist has arrived at the threshold of art creation through the act of religious practice; in the repetitive and precise creation processes, he accomplishes a spiritual meditation forged by the flesh.
For Zhang, art creation is a process of self-meditation, akin to a personal practice of “investigating natures and principles and rectifying the mind”. He focuses on extracting motifs from ancient religious architecture and references them through abstract painting, replacing brushstrokes with an anti-painting language of paint relief. Through experimentation, he distils a form of painting that defies conventional painting practices.
In this way, the artist must strive to suppress his subjective will over the picture in the painting process to pursue a state of “selflessness”. Yet, he cannot relinquish control entirely so as not to risk the painting becoming unconscious scribbling. Throughout this process, he neither treats objects and materials solely as tools for expressing personal ideas nor views his works as merely projections of one’s own spirit. Nor does he regard them as pure material objects. Hence, spiritual meditation serves to balance these aspects, becoming a crucial factor in reaching the “threshold”.
Zhang largely employs oil paint and uses a specially designed pneumatic injector to create a sense of thickness that is akin to low reliefs in his paintings. Selected motifs as the smallest image units are repetitively arranged into larger hand-drawn subjects, which are then scanned and projected onto the canvas. Zhang then holds the pneumatic injector filled with paint and outlines and fills the lines in the picture until the entire canvas is covered. Throughout the rigorous creation process, the artist upholds an almost ascetic craftsmanship, persistently pursuing hands-on embodiment.
Pearl Lam Galleries