EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS

After the residency project in 2018, Studio Gallery is very pleased to invite artist Zhang Yi to present her first solo exhibition after her return to China "Down To The River South" in the gallery space on November 2, 2019.

“Xia Jiang Nan”（go down to the river south) is a metaphor of entering a world of the traditional Chinese literati culture and life from the northerners’ perspective. After years of staying in Europe and the United States, I took a trip to the Yangtze River area to chase my “cultural root”. What I carried with were my doubts.

As a Chinese, how do I deal with the contradictory between the imaginary attractive ancient and the troublesome brutal present. As a sculptor, I ask why do I make objects, do they create environments that carry our imagination; or the object being independent reminds us of the reality?

Found from my journey, the Wen Hengshan plant wisteria suggests potential answers to my questions. The rattan is a symbol of the literati culture at the same time it is a vivid life, a single object that travels through different contemporaries and connects the past and the present. Therefore I take the wisteria as the motif of this exhibition connects the segments of my thoughts; as well as a physical structure organizes my objects.

—— Zhang Yi, Oct.2019, at studio in Beijing