Overview
Vivien Zhang (b. 1990) lives and works in London.
Zhang's paintings ask us to question the flawed linguistic, visual and taxonomic systems that we use to understand all facets of life. She examines our consumption of images and information in a technologically mediated world.
Zhang assembles motifs collected from personal experiences and intensive research into abstract fields within her paintings. The canvas becomes a site for the motifs from multiple contexts and cultures to collide and defy their origin, generating what Zhang considers 'alternative landscapes’. Precise, digitally constructed sections of painting sit with expressive washes which drip and pool. Her paintings straddle the tension between the perfection of a digital image and the chance of painterly composition.
