In 2007, Stefanie Zhang returned with Treading on the Sand, which is an exhibition left by Stefanie Zhang and a space for reflection.
Compared with previous works, Stefanie Zhang's latest works are sharp and fresh. Subtract a little light dance, add some tough and textured pop.
Her turning point was based on two changes. The first is the change of painting theme. She chose pills, band-AIDS, surgical instruments and other items related to diseases as the performance objects. Just as Stefanie Zhang named this series of works (***36 pieces) as "registration", the information carried by these performance objects themselves became an important factor in the picture. Choosing the theme of the performance depends on an opportunity. For artists, they need a kind of ability-intuition, judgment and self-confidence to turn "accident" into a reason for creation. The following problems are more serious. How to express the selected theme through the visual language that you are good at, and let the "breath" of the expressed object come out in generate on the screen? This problem is even more critical in paintings that represent a single object and have almost no background description.
This involves the second change of Stefanie Zhang: her previous works are mostly smudged, while her new works are mainly marked with lines, slightly embellished, and the lines are delicate, firm and sharp, which penetrate into the back of the paper. The first time I saw her new work, the "bone method" in the "six methods" of painting abroad immediately came to my mind. In the process of almost pure "pictographic" painting. Stefanie Zhang realized the picture effect with her own experience of "using bone and pen".
Stefanie Zhang fully understood the "physical property" of the performance object. "Experience" is not only a visual process, but also contains more tactile components-including the smooth and rough touch of materials, the experience of softness and hardness, the grasp of shape transition, and even the understanding of temperature, weight and density of objects. From this point of view, the "reaction" in Zhang Yanzi's "Reaction Pictograph" is not just an observation of the object, or further, it is a kind of examination, but an understanding of the object by using the senses as much as possible, even surpassing the "vision".
Next question: After transcending vision and having the ability to understand the object of expression, is there a difference in depth between the strength of Chinese painting, the perception of brush strokes in painting and the sense of "mud" (by extension, various sculpture materials) in the process of sculpture?
Looking at Stefanie Zhang's latest works, we can clearly feel that she not only discovered the secret of perceiving objects, but also mastered the secret of using brushes and pigments. The way she describes the object reminds me of all kinds of cognition about the "bone pen"
According to legend, there is a fortune-telling method-"bone-touching method". By touching bones, we can know a person's fate and character. "Using a bone pen" should be related to this method at the earliest. In painting, brushes use structured lines and smudges on silk and paper to depict people and things. Is it similar to the way that "bone-touching people" touch human bones through skin? Can a fortune teller use his fingers for the painter's reference? Then go to the masseur. Chen Julai wrote in The Notes of An Zhi's Characters: Before a masseur becomes an apprentice, he must crush the soybeans in the middle of a bag of soybeans, and the peripheral soybeans cannot be destroyed before he can become an apprentice. This kind of strength, in my opinion, actually involves the reason why the brush touches the paper. For video recording, please refer to the scene of Tai Chi master writing calligraphy in Ang Lee's movie Pushing Hands.