Introduction of the artist:

JIANG Zhi (China)

Born in 1971, Yuanjiang, China. Lives and
works in Beijing and Shenzhen, China.
Selected solo exhibitions: 2012 If This is a Man, Times Museum, Guangzhou; 2011 A Thought Arises, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai; 2010  ATTITUDE An Exhibiton by Jiang Zhi, Osage Gallery, Shanghai; Osage Gallery, kwun tong, Hong Kong and Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing; 1999  Mu Mu – Exhibition of Jiang Zhi’s Photography, Borges Libreria, Guangzhou;
Selected group exhibitions: 2011 the 1st CAFAM Biennale, Beijing; 2011 Moving Image in China: 1988 – 2011, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; 2010  Beyond Memory: Contemporary Photography in China, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; 2006  Never Go Out Without My DV Cam – Video Art from China, the Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid; 2005 2nd Guangzhou
Triennial, China; 2004 Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, ICP and Asia Society, New York; 2003 the 50th Venice Biennale, Italy.

Jiang Zhi’s new painting series, A Thought Arises, began in 2010. These images are neither the artist’s own expression based on a personal aesthetic relationship to the real world, nor are they his digital productions or manipulations; instead, they are generated by the computer screen itself, by a system error or delay resulting in the display of an interrupted interface. As the artist notes, these visual results “form another spectacle that derives from an inner and abstract world of the computer. It is a stimulated momentary world that can be easily changed and re-shaped, and seems to be even more vulnerable, accidental,
unreliable and transient.”

Introduction of works:

Not Found - Darker, oil on canvas, 160×300cm, 2011

Content Control - Sorrow No.1, oil on canvas, 160×280cm, 2011

Content Control - Sorrow, oil on canvas, 160×280cm, 2011

Add cc - Ecstasy No.1, oil on canvas, 180×400cm, 2010

Add cc - Ecstasy No.2, oil on canvas, 160×330cm, 2010

Cropped - Immortality No.1, oil on canvas, 220×300cm, 2011

Cropped - Immortality No.2, oil on canvas, 220×300cm, 2011

Jiang Zhi’s new painting series, A Thought Arises, began in 2010. These images are neither the artist’s own expression based on his aesthetic understanding of the real world, nor his digital production or manipulation; instead, they are generated by the computer screen itself when it has a system error or delay to display a interrupted interface. As the artist noted, “they form another spectacle that derives from an inner and abstract world of the computer. It is a stimulated momentary world that can be easily changed and re-shaped, and seems to be even more vulnerable, accidental, unreliable and transient.”

Based on the pre-set mechanism of the computer display, lines and colours can be extended and propagated by the incessant operation after the system error and appear as abnormal fragments of digital visualisation. These original screenshots are not even meant to be viewed as proper‘images’, but rather, from our general understanding, as ‘corrupted images’ or ‘fault images’, rather than ‘false images’, virtually behind the screen. Although they look abstract and expressive, the paintings are produced through a realistic method, to imitate what was actually on the computer screen.

In this series, there has been a new and somewhat democratic collaboration between the computer and its owner. The former is no longer merely a digital ‘assistant’, but acts as an independent ‘creator’, whilst only the latter first ‘sees’ its ‘creation’, and transforms them into ‘images’. During this collaboration, ‘images’ are visualised spontaneously from digital data onto the screen, found and captured by the artist, and then ultimately endorsed through his reinterpretation in oil painting. Now, false or true, abstract or realistic, digital or substantial, copied or invented, artificial or natural, have all lost their boundaries.