ZHANG ZHAOYING: LIFELONG BEAUTY
curated by Lü Peng, Li Guohua, Carlotta Scarpa
Museo di Palazzo Grimani | Musei archeologici nazionali di Venezia e della Laguna
Ramo Grimani 4858 – 30122
8 May - 3 August 2025
Opening hours: 9:00 am - 7:00 pm
The exhibition “Lifelong Beauty” presents a national preview of the artistic career of Zhang Zhaoying, an exponent of the New Generation who has been able to reinterpret the evolution of Chinese painting from the 1990s to the present day with a unique expressive skill during a period of great social, economic and cultural change.
The exhibition, curated by Lü Peng, Li Guohua and Carlotta Scarpa, is organised by L ART∙CONTEMPORARY with Manuela Schiavano and will be held on the second floor of the Museo di Palazzo Grimani part of the Musei archeologici nazionali di Venezia e della Laguna.
As the well-known Chinese art historian Lü Peng says: “Although influenced by the Renaissance, European modernism and the avant-garde, Zhang Zhaoying has avoided rigidly adhering to predefined pictorial patterns, creating an extraordinary synthesis between free technique and controlled painting, exploring the cultural transformations and new social dynamics of globalisation to ultimately question beauty and universal truth.”
Through an exhibition of 26 paintings, the artist deconstructs and reconstructs traditional iconographies, intertwining past and present, tradition and innovation, and developing a visual narrative that invites the viewer into a dialogue between cultures. This narrative seamlessly integrates with the rooms of the Museo di Palazzo Grimani—an extraordinary example of Tuscan-Roman Renaissance architecture in Venice—richly decorated with stuccoes and frescoes by artists such as Giovanni da Udine, Francesco Salviati, and Federico Zuccari. The museum preserves the legacy of Giovanni Grimani and his collection of Greek and Roman statues, which can be admired in the Tribune and the Sala del Doge.
Born in Guangzhou, Zhang Zhaoying studied oil painting at the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts and continued his training in Brussels and at the University of Science and Technology in Macau, where he specialised in scenic art and the theatre of the absurd. These studies helped make his painting highly dramatic.
Contemporary issues such as globalisation, consumerism, social media and AI technology have transformed the world, leading to an explosion of information and images from different civilisations. The artist tackles this flow of forms and meanings with a wide-ranging approach and an irreverent touch, using a method of compilation, reorganisation and reappropriation. And so Broadway shows, circuses, artists and historical figures become part of his works, not as a simple montage or superimposition, but as a tool to react to changes in the world, discover connections between individuals and investigate contemporary society.
The narratives that follow one another incessantly appear like theatrical scenes, but then suddenly reveal themselves as “games” or “visual traps” for the spectator. The resulting ambiguity stems from two distinct plots: one is the coherent and legible iconography of the background, and the other is made up of disturbing elements, nonsense that floats on the surface of the painting, such as an octopus or a giant shrimp that stand out against a clear sky in the style of an old picture postcard: allegorical puzzles that limit and control each other. In Zhang there is a subtle and insistent technique of figurative representation that aims to lure the viewer who, lacking precise spatial and logical coordinates, experiences a crisis similar to a play by Beckett.
Stylistically, Zhang integrates various techniques, from soft to more decisive brushstrokes, maintaining an extraordinary expressive coherence and pictorial ability. On display are several works from the Lifelong Beauty series.And beauty is one of the themes most explored by the artist: a dynamic concept to be investigated where the observation of life from the sidelines leads him to continually dismantle and recompose his perceptions. His ceaseless work captures the interaction between imagination, expectation and reality, inviting the onlooker to explore the transient and diverse manifestations of beauty. Each frame of the painting is ultimately a window offering a view of a parallel universe: an invitation to experience these ephemeral moments and appreciate the intricate union that lies behind human aspirations.
Although the artist does not offer clear answers, he guides us to re-examine and rethink everything that is fixed and infallible, and this capacity for adaptation and innovation makes his art a particularly significant contribution to the contemporary art scene.
Biographical note
Zhang Zhaoying was born in Guangzhou, China, in 1988. He has a degree in Fine Arts from the Department of Oil Painting at the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He is currently completing his doctorate at the University of Science and Technology of Macao and teaches at the School of the Tianjin Institute of Fine Arts. He is also a postgraduate supervisor at Sahmyook University. Zhaoying is considered one of the leading figures among artists of the post-1985 generation, standing out for his strongly internationalised perspective. His works reflect a hybrid mentality, which crosses different mediums, languages and temporalities, and are nurtured by profound iconological research. He has exhibited his work in numerous solo exhibitions, including the Yibo Gallery in Shanghai in 2021 and the Nanjing University Art Museum in 2019, as well as in various galleries and exhibition spaces in China. His work has also been presented in important international collective exhibitions, including “Global Painting” at the MART in Rovereto, the Chengdu Biennial and various exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland and New York. His works are included in prestigious collections such as the MART in Rovereto, the National Art Museum of China, the White Rabbit Gallery and the Today Art Museum, among others.
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