Zhang Zipiao: Swallow Whole
8 June - 28 July 2023
LGDR
3 East 89 Street, New York
LGDR is pleased to present Swallow Whole, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Zhang Zipiao (b. 1993, Beijing, China; BFA 2015, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), whose lush canvases imbue recognizable imagery—a shell; an apple; a spider—with a painterly quality intended to “at once evoke meat, bodily fluids, ripe fruit, and the petals or pistils of flowers.” The new work furthers Zipiao’s exploration of the human body and organic matter, but represents a thematic and technical departure brought on by her experience during the prolonged pandemic lockdown in Beijing.
Zipiao’s gore-like palettes and twisting forms capture a psychological unease inextricably tied to the perilous social conditions in which the body of work was first developed. Diverging from her practice’s earlier allusions to beauty, lust, and euphoria, lockdown led to the artist’s experimentation with darker themes and new approaches to process; notably, for the canvases on view, the artist has embarked without planned composition, approaching each painting with intuitive brushwork and improvisational energy.
Learn more in the above-linked press release, and browse a preview of works on view below. See the Dropbox folder linked above to download high-resolution image files. Artwork information is in each image’s file title. Image reuse must be exclusively in association with press coverage of Zhang Zipiao: Swallow Whole at LGDR, with the credit line “© Zhang Zipiao, courtesy of LGDR.”
