55

Zhang Wanyue’s first individual exhibition with 55 "The Place Where I Was Left Behind" opens on the 23rd of May, 2026. The exhibition showcases the artist’s mixed-media works on canvas and is to close on the 28th of June.

Some paintings are not meant to be looked at. They are meant to be walked into.

Zhang Wanyue’s paintings are very light. Light to the extent that they seem like the traces left by something before it dissipates, not having already vanished but rather the moment of vanishing being captured. Human figures float within the colors, the colors seep into the fabric, and the fabric retains the shapes left by water and time. It’s hard to say exactly what she is painting, but you can roughly sense who it is, or who it once was.

Zhang Wanyue’s works are based on acrylic, supplemented by textile pigments, embroidery, and various mixed media, constantly moving between paper and canvas. For her, the choice of materials is never a technical issue but a matter of substance. Which materials can remember, which will forget, which will leave marks after bearing, and which will shrink quietly after being touched. The transparent layering of acrylic creates a sense of stratification of time, while the subtle bleeding of textile pigments along the fibers is more akin to skin than pigment. The intervention of embroidery is particularly crucial. It is a labor that requires the body to be in close proximity for a long time, and the stitches themselves are a record of obsession.

The human figures that repeatedly appear in her paintings are often in profile, or so blurred that only the posture remains. They do not look outward, nor do they look inward; they just stand there, walk, or float, coexisting with plants, animals, symbols, and light sources in an uncertain space. This space has no perspective, no stable horizon, yet it has a convincing gravitational pull, making everything in the painting belong to each other. This is not a stacking of fantasy images, but rather an intuitive system with a highly consistent internal logic. She knows where to place each symbol, even if she may not be able to explain it clearly in words.

Zhang Wanyue grew up in a digital age with an overload of visual information, yet she chooses to respond to this era in an extremely manual and slow way. This kind of reversibility is not a pose but a temperament. Her works lack strong visual impact and clear issue slogans, but after prolonged viewing, there is a peculiar sense of lingering, as if one has stopped somewhere but cannot pinpoint exactly where.

This is precisely what "The Place Where I was Held Behind" aims to preserve: that indescribable pause.

Zhang Wanyue was born in Dazhou, Sichuan in 1998. She graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Chengdu Fine Arts College, Sichuan Conservatory of Music in 2021 (B.A.) and in 2025 (M.F.A.). She currently lives and works in Chengdu, Sichuan.