Everything’s the Same for Painting

Star Gallery is pleased to present “Everything’s the Same for Painting,” Zhang Hui’s first solo appearance since 2015. For the past decade and half, Zhang Hui’s has consistently developed diverse themes while working in series. His work gives an impression of quiet, reflective temporality, while possessing a gripping emotional power. “Beauty alone is almost an insult, but beauty can say a lot of things,” the artist once said himself, appropriating tropes of classical Western art as well as traditional Chinese paintings in his work. The excess of empty aesthetic signs from the past that exist in our daily lives became Zhang Hui’s chosen material to tell the story of contemporary mankind, its feelings, struggles and realizations. Under his brush, clichés acquire a new visual value. The visible concentration and self-awareness in his paintings mirror Zhang Hui’s own character. In life he prefers mountain hiking to socializing. Zhang Hui attains his field of thematic expression by remaining a distant observer of his subjects. Painting is his way to cope with emotions.