Tempesta Gallery in Milan will be inhabited by swans, dragons, pearls and cerulean horizons until 21 March, 2025. No, this is not a mystical theatrical setting, but an artistic intervention by Zhenlin Zhang, a very young Chinese painter (1998) based in London, who uses oil pigments and linen canvases to combine his native and Tibetan cultures in intriguing shades of colour. With tones ranging from a fiery, carnal red to a cold, hetero-blue, figures representing the fragility and transience of the human condition gradually and confusedly emerge. “Ode to Transience” is in fact the title of the exhibition which, with works created for this project in 2024, focuses on the interpenetration between the opposite attributes of our being-in-the-world: vulnerability and strength, the inevitable transience of natural life and the tension towards the continuity of culture, ancestrality and evolution.
Zhenlin Zhang, “Ode to Transience”, installation view, ph Sarah Indriolo, courtesy of TEMPESTA Gallery
In this oxymoronic coexistence, the crystal-clear representation crumbles and gives way to labile and metamorphic images, born on the borderline between the real dimension and the oneiric sphere. What dominates is a mixture of clearly recognisable elements (the animals dear to the Chinese tradition, for example) and the non-definiteness of the visual impact, which at first glance is reduced to a spot of colour at the dawn of its own taking shape. What remains constant is only the oscillation. The interplay between the abstract and the figurative is incessant, and equally dynamic is the interplay between the fragility of the individual’s existence, rendered by the extreme shaded strokes, and the permanence of culture, which finds anchorage in the canvas through symbols such as pearls or talismans.
Zhenlin Zhang, “Sign language”, oil on linens, 155 x 140 cm, 2024, detail, ph Sarah Indriolo courtesy of TEMPESTA Gallery
These objects echo the Oriental tradition, a tradition based on the transmission from generation to generation of the imperishable signs of the original culture, including precious artefacts and mythical images such as dragons and swans. While these objects embody the eternal and time-honoured, the gentle, indistinct brushstrokes blur the visual scheme, hinting at its inevitable ‘suspension’ – both representational and interpretive.
Zhenlin Zhang, “Skin”, oil on linens, 150 x 140 cm, 2024, detail, ph Sarah Indriolo courtesy of TEMPESTA Gallery
Speaking about his own art, Zhang says: «The coldest places in the world are not glaciers, but the predestined coldness of human skin. Goodbyes are not just separations: they are encounters with the deeper meaning of life, an opportunity to reflect on the fleeting beauty of the most significant moments of our existence. My work aims to honour these transitions, blending hope and solitude with the wisdom of ancestral traditions».
Zhenlin Zhang, “Dream”, oil on linens, 120 x 90 cm, 2024, ph Sarah Indriolo, courtesy of TEMPESTA Gallery
Thus, wishing to give a visible trait to a ‘poetry of passage’, the artist creates a sort of chromatic and formal cyclicity: pastel blue merges with deep blue and then with white, cardinal red with orange and pink shades; the dragon’s head with a cloud of colour, the cloud with the indistinct. The cyclical nature of the stroke mirrors the meaning of the work, which intuitively refers to the cyclical nature in which each element, as it transforms, loses itself in the other and reconfigures itself, composing a complex environment of interdependent exchange. Thus, the viewers are also led to immerse themselves in the picture-cycle and to rethink themselvesf as part of that flow of transition and join the Ode to Transience. In line with Tibetan philosophy, being a spectator of these works is not a pure act of aesthetic contemplation, but an opportunity to bring to light the belonging of us, fragile human individuals, to the whole, that is, to the chaotic yet sublime process of becoming.
Info:
Zhenlin Zhang. Ode to Transience
17.01.25 – 21.03.25
TEMPESTA GALLERY
Foro Buonaparte, 68 – Milano, 20121
www.tempestagallery.com
Graduate in Philosophy from the University of Milan, where she currently lives, she specialized in aesthetics and contemporary criticism. Passionate of the art world and devoted to research, she believes in the potential of the interdisciplinary gaze, which intertwines critical thinking, typical of philosophical backgroud, and the communicative power of art to shape the evolving identity of its time.
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