ZHANG Ruyi: Consciousness of Location: Solo Exhibition

Don Gallery is proud to announce the upcoming launch of Zhang Ruyi’s solo show “Consciousness of Location.” In this show, the artist investigates intuition by modeling reality to establish a relationship between the individual and the environment. Zhang teases out the interactions which underlie the ambiguities between the individual and reality via a misplacement of internal and external spaces.

The artist has long been concerned themes of suppression and contradiction that industrial and urban existences bring to individual emotion. In recent years, her “Decoration” series has delved into hierarchical connotations of individuals, objects, and space by a transposition of referential and positional relationships. 

In “Consciousness of Location,” Internal External Unit is a second-hand air conditioner condenser unit which has been merged with a home aquarium. The exterior of the piece is covered in ceramic tiles commonly seen on the outside of buildings, while the fish tank itself is filled with concrete blocks impaled by steel bars and plants alike. Exposed fan blades turn slowly, mimicking the languid movements of the fish, while the operational condenser unit sends movement through the tank. In the presentation of the object as medium, the individual elements are in dialogue with their surroundings. Within an exhibition space filled with constructed scaffolding, two other pieces also join in the dialogue. Submerged Landscape and Matte Substance - 6 also displace spatial experience through means of reproducing construction infrastructure materials. The pieces attempt to preserve an instant of silent encounter between the components of daily life and urban structures.

The “Location” in the exhibition title -- “Consciousness of Locations” -- is an external place existing in reality, which achieves a cordoning of the individual by means of change in the urban setting. It is also a self-reversal of the internal, which briefly extracts the individual from the internalities of life. By collecting, converting, and allocating the materials commonly seen in construction sites such as tile, cement, and plants, the artist transforms these pieces of condensed matter into objects representing identity and emotion in the exhibition space. The interposition and cross-reference of internal and external elements represents the conundrum of individual existence within contemporary society.