Hanart TZ Gallery presents important calligraphy/ink artist Zhang Hao in April, opening Tuesday 9th April 2013. Zhang Hao will display views into the pictorial memory of his "Spirit Journeys", and turn the gallery into the memory palace of his art.
Zhang Hao was born in Tianjin in 1962, and graduated from the China Academy of Art (Hangzhou) in 1985, where he is now professor. His principle artistic project in the past three decades has been exploring the mysterious abyss dividing visual form and the written word, and in developing the artistic language of the spirit of ink.
"The Shape of Journeys" and the "Revival of the Ink Brush"
“The tool of the ink brush has remained constant for the Chinese people, just like the Chinese language itself. Chinese people utter Chinese in their dreams, no matter how good their command of foreign languages," Zhang Hao explains. "When I put ink on 'xuan' paper with a brush, it is like tracing the path of my body and soul."
Perhaps it is not so important to analyse the calligraphy-like structures of Zhang Hao's ink art. It is more important to know that these "structural frames" are the distillation of his journeys, his memory of cities and spaces; they represent the physical forms of his imaginative interpretations of special experiences.
For "Spirit Journeys", Hanart TZ Gallery has selected twenty works created in the past eight years. From the sentimental "Ancient City Ping Yao" (2005) to the sparse "Spirit Journeys" and "Mind Travel", Zhang Hao guides viewers through his labyrinth of skeletal forms and suggestive imageries, bringing to life again the experience of a traveller in pursuit of spirit journeys.
“Zhang Hao condenses into calligraphic form the experience of traveling and visiting historical cities. He writes his temporal journeys as calligraphic experiences, and revives the spirit of Chinese words as radical emergences out a blank sheet. These are moments when the flux of the world stops for the artist, and he senses himself afresh. These are the moments of "Spiritual Journeys" and "Ancient Cities", when the calligraphic word becomes Form.” Chang Tsong-Zung