Opening: Saturday 7 March 5 – 7 pm
Hauser & Wirth Somerset is proud to present ‘Four Seasons’, a series of brand new paintings, alongside a ‘Space Painting’, where the artist will paint directly onto the walls, ceilings and floor of a room. The works are all connected to the natural environment; enlarged views of water, leaves and trees.
Zhang’s delicate paintings bring nature into close-up, subtly blurring the boundary between indoors and out. The works are rarely produced from direct observation, but from sketches, photographs and, significantly, from his memories of the objects he is depicting. Zhang’s tree paintings are taken from photographs of the trees that line the streets of Shanghai. The trees appear elevated, viewed from below; they are never rooted to the ground, but rather appear to float in the sky, causing the viewer to stop and reflect. The trees, a constant marker of the four seasons and the passing of time, are imbued with their own individual characteristics, playing on the idea that everything living is sentient.