On May 7, 2016, “Perception with Newfangled Zhang Wei's Works Exhibition” opened in Building No.3 of the Today Art Museum. The exhibition is sponsored by the Today Art Museum, to feature 62 ink paintings created by the painter Zhang Wei in recent years.

The opening ceremony was held at 15:00, the honored guests including Deputy Director of the General Office of the Ministry of Culture Li Baozong, Deputy Director of the National Art Museum of China Zhang Zikang, Deputy Director of Committee of Theory at the China Artists Association, Editor-in-Chief of “Art” magazine, Academic Director of the exhibition Shang Hui, a famous art critic and the exhibition curator Yang Weimin, former Vice President of China National Academy of Arts Liu Qian, former Party Secretary of the Graduate School of the Central Committee of the CCP Party School, doctoral tutor Duan Ruopeng, Vice President of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University Zhang Gan, Prof. Dai Shunzhi from the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of zhaogang.com Lang Yongchun, Vice President of Nantong University Prof. Fan Xiaodong, Director of Exhibition Department of National Art Museum of China Yi E, Executive Vice President of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting Shi Lei, Dean of the School of Humanities at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Shao Liang, Head of the Department of Curatorial Research of CAFA Art Museum Wang Chunchen, a researcher of China National Academy of Painting Gu Ping, a famous art critic Hao Qingsong, Shang Yong from Nanjing University of the Arts and so on attended the opening ceremony.

The exhibition presents several series of works created by Zhang Wei in recent years, including the Sounds of Nature series, Floating Dream series, Rivers and Lakes series, Hometown series, and Salute to Morandi series, etc. Themes of Zhang Wei’s paintings are involved in the details and experiences of life, the creation both borrows everyday situations, commonplace behaviors to draw fragments of life’s images and uses the disorder and wanton penetration of ink to destroy the normal visual experiences. In the opinion of the artist, “ink is not limited by one language, but has an aesthetic meaning.”

The exhibition is themed “Perception with Newfangled”, namely the use of vision to perceive images, and generates newfangled visual experiences. The painter is through the displacement of seemingly familiar scenes and behaviors, able to create a familiar strangeness, so that people get a newfangled and unusual visual experience in seemingly everyday scenes and behaviors.

In the works of the painter, the traditional language of brush and ink such as ink implication, vigorous strokes, penetration of ink becomes an important rhetoric way to implant Chinese cultural and historical breath into his paintings with a contemporary context. Thus, the intervening and destruction of ink also has a cultural meaning. The pursuit of an old, broken, fantastical, mysterious newfangled sense is a reserved and illusory aesthetic attitude adhered to by the painter in this contemporary fashionable and flashy urban culture, and it is also a cultural perception full of sense of touch, formed by construction and destruction.

The exhibition will continue to May 18.

Text by Lin Jiabin/CAFA ART INFO, Photo by Lin Jiabin & Today Art Museum

Translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO

About the Artist

Born in Hai’an in Jiangsu province in 1971, Zhang Wei graduated from the Fine Arts Department at Nantong Normal College in 1994, completed the postgraduate class of the Nanjing University of the Arts in 2002, graduated from the School of Arts, Soochow University in 2008, with a master’s degree, now he is a member of China Artists Association, Vice Chairman of Jiangsu Provincial Young Artists Association, member of Figure Painting Art Committee at Jiangsu Provincial Artists Association, Vice President of Nantong Institute of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, National First-Class Artist, he was awarded Jiangsu Provincial outstanding young painter by Jiangsu Federation of Literature and art circles in 2006. In recent years, Zhang has held solo exhibitions in the National Art Museum of China, Art Museum of China National Academy of Painting, National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture,?Ukraine, and participated in hundreds of group exhibitions at home and abroad, his works are collected by the National Art Museum of China, China National Academy of Painting, Central Committee of the CCP Party School, Chinese Literature and Art Foundation, Jiangsu Provincial Chinese Painting Institute, etc.

About the Exhibition

Venue: Hall 3, Today Art Museum

Duration: May 7 – May 18, 2016

Hours: 10: 00 - 18: 00, Monday – Sunday

Organizer: Today Art Museum

Supported by Artcm

Academic Chair: Shang Hui

Curator: Yang Weimin