Zhang Ke Participates in "Concrete Art" at Boxes Art Museum

Concrete Art

Zhang Ke

2023.03.09 – 2023.05.10

Boxes Art Museum

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In the 1930s, the Concrete Art movement emerged in France, emphasizing the need for images to be composed of pure planes, lines and colors. These elements in painting do not represent anything other than themselves; they do not have any other meaning than their own expression. The purpose of this action is to liberate painting from the limited “symbolic” representation in order to achieve the infinity of art. In 1954, the Japanese ” Gutai Group ” used this term in the same way, with the aim of removing Japanese art from the totalitarian whirlpool of the old era and proclaiming the spiritual freedom of the new era through the “concreteness” of action.

With the theme of “Concrete Art”, this exhibition extracts the concept of “concrete” from art history, observes the “concreteness” and “difference” in each artist’s creative production logic, and forms a solid surface of potential, unknown, and various possibilities, thus embodying “concrete”. Compared to the previous research on the “taste” and simple “sociological” approach of the works, this exhibition hopes to make the “sense of reality” and “sense of contact” of the artists’ works become the most visible feature.

Concrete Art Installation View

Concrete Art Installation View

Concrete Art Installation View

In her works, Zhang Ke is concerned with the contrast between two formal elements: the continuous, color-transformed sense of “mass” and the sharply defined structures of black and white. The subjects are often constructed through small, linear brushstrokes, lending man-made objects the illusion of “growth,” much like plants. Elements positioned further back in space become increasingly unified, such as the blue sky and red curtains, seemingly hinting at a certain irresistible vastness. As a result, her works feature a distinct spatial progression from foreground to background.

Dessert wine

2022

Oil on canvas

100 × 80 cm

In Dessert Wine and Gardener, Zhang Ke explores the juxtaposition of the “supple” and ever-changing forms of natural decay with the sharp, stable forms of artificial objects. Nature undergoes cycles of flourishing and decline, yet its process points toward eternity; man-made objects possess stable and forceful forms, yet their existence lasts no more than a fleeting thirty or fifty years. Placed side by side, the two seem to evoke a reflection on human finitude and the harm humanity inflicts upon itself.

More specifically, Dessert Wine conveys a sense of fate and closure through smoke enveloped by a lampshade, while Gardener addresses humanity’s longstanding, gradual, and one-directional “correction” of nature.

Gardener

2022

Oil on canvas

40 × 60 cm