Zhang Litao — Ville, lecture erronée — A2Z Art Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: December 12, 2013 → February 8, 2014

There has always been a feeling of greyness over the greenish red paintings of Zhang Litao.

In the pictures, people, scenes and objects are painted with strokes of coldness and gloominess. Memories are dispositioned every now and then. The linear way of narration is intentionally disrupted by the artist; instead, collage and grafting are applied that allow spectators to travel freely across the time. Memories about oneself, others, surroundings, history and politics are secretly blurred, which implies that in the world of the artist, there is no absolute truth. Everything about memory, symbols and spaces are connected through metaphors or uncertainty while the artist is the decoder of such connections.

Every one of us has this vain hope that we could be the observer of the past or the future by a certain means. Painting is the closest means of free expression. However, the attitude towards such hope held by Zhang Litao is cautious and controlled: his paintings are not of judgment, prediction or grief, but of curiosity and analysis of the past and imagination. Under the greyness of his work, layers of covered and altered scenes of memory are hidden, with only a surface of absurdness and chaos to be seen.