In over two years of operation, Arrow Factory has presented exhibitions and projects that have been distinguished in part by their concrete or hypothetical relationship to the social context of its immediate local setting. 38 Jianchang Hutong, a new kinetic installation work by Zhang Peili, establishes a different approach. Shedding any direct social commentary or audience interaction, 38 Jianchang Hutong represents a careful merging with the interior architecture of Arrow Factory’s space while emphatically disassociating itself with the external social surroundings. In an almost imperceptible cycle, the back wall inside the space creeps towards the front glass façade and slowly retreats back again. Correspondingly, a pale circle of light on the wall widens and narrows as the wall moves forward and back.

The installation 38 Jianchang Hutong asks of its viewers not casual engagement, but meditative patience. As such, it can be interpreted as both a desire to attract and pull in one’s attention and an act to willfully repel and disregard it. Working primarily in the medium of video, Zhang Peili’s artistic practice has often concerned itself with the slippage between realities that are constructed or perceived and that which is experienced bodily. Putting the camera aside this time, Zhang relies upon visual strategies to create an elastic void in the midst of copious hutong life which foregrounds the incongruity of Arrow Factory to its adjacent surroundings while also prompting an acute sense of engaged disengagement.

Zhang Peili (b.1957, Hangzhou) graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1984, and has served as that academy’s founding Dean and Professor in the New Media Department since 2001. Selected solo shows of his work have been mounted at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, new Plymouth (2009), OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (2008) and Museum of Modern Art (1999). Selected group exhibitions include: '85 New Wave, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2007); China Power Station, Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Zone of Urgency, Venice Biennale (2003); Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum of Art, New York (1999); Cities on the Move, CAPC musée d'Art contemporain de Bordeaux and Secession, Vienna (1997-9); and Inside Out, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1998). He is part of a concurrent two-person exhibition at REDCAT in Los Angeles starting in mid-september. He lives and works in Hangzhou.

The Arrow Factory would like to thank Boers-Li Gallery for their generous support of this exhibition.

On View: until October 10, 2010

Venue: Arrow Factory
38 Jianchang Hutong
(off Guozijian Jie)
Beijing, 100007 China

http://www.arrowfactory.org.cn