Zhang Ruyi
Individual Plant-13
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Zhang Ruyi
b.1985, Shanghai
Zhang Ruyi’s (b.1985, Shanghai) artistic practice unfolds around everyday logic. Her work occupies a unique space which reconciles artifacts, the industrial experience, and urban life. The artist finds inspiration in everyday materials. In her main narrative approach, she begins with inner intuition and explores the hierarchical interactions between individuals, material, and place. Her work mainly involves installation, sculpture, and integrated media. She uses “reality” as “model” for drawing out moments of individual perception as the city shifts around its inhabitants, planting them within the material to bestow a significance which extends beyond the material.
Solo exhibitions of Zhang Ruyi include “Decoration: Building Debris” (2020) at the Sifang Art Museum, Shanghai, China and “Decoration: Dump” (2017) at the MOCA Pavilion, Shanghai, China. Zhang’s work has been shown in group exhibitions in institutions and museums including, UCCA Dune (Beidaihe, 2020); K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong, 2018); Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2017); Cass Sculpture Foundation (Chichester, 2016); Sifang Art Museum (Nanjing, 2016); chi K11 art museum (Shanghai, 2016) and Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum (Shanghai, 2015). Zhang is the recipient of Prix YISHU 8 Chine 2017 and the participant of the 2017 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Programme, now in studio residency hosted by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council at Villa Sträuli, Winterthur. Her work is collected by Sifang Art Museum, Fosun Foundation and the Cass Sculpture Foundation.
Zhang currently lives and works in Shanghai.
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Matte Substance / 2020
Rusty monuments and remnants from such processes of renovation take on tragically beautiful forms in Matte Substance-12 (2020) , where the artist grafts discarded steel rods, electrical wires and gravel on to concrete cacti.
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Ewha in the Storm / 2020-2021
Rusty monuments and remnants from such processes of renovation take on tragically beautiful forms in Ewha in the Storm (2020), where the artist grafts discarded steel rods, electrical wires and gravel on to concrete cacti.
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Planter / 2020
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Domestic Wasteland / 2020
Apollo’s songs grow harsher, for we now make noise in cyberpunk megacities. Working from the rapidly developing metropolis of Shanghai, Zhang Ruyi continues her exploration of renovation, construction waste and the poetics of remnants. Domestic Wasteland (2020) is a sound installation comprising of four colossal metal plates placed in front of loudspeakers, emitting the audio recording of different construction sites.
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Lithic Sample / 2020
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Individual Plant / 2018 - 2019
Dysmorphic cacti made out of concrete spawn on a tiled pedestal, petrified as a plant specimen. Individual Plant carries forward the artist’s interest in how natural objects are disciplined by their larger environment. The seductive flowers of cacti and succulents are often the only green growing in the scorched desert, their nectre drawing pollinators and feeders from miles away, an oasis in a wasteland sustaining an ecology of its own. Their roots often dig deep into the arid soil, absorbing moisture from the ancient riverbeds underground.
Zhang delineates her clinical gaze on architecture and the city by abstracting and re-positing the geometric construction of this natural object. In Individual Plant – 19, Zhang grafts electric wire into the now concrete of the plant, demonstration the harsh, deeply intrusive infiltration of industry upon nature.
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