DUST 171217

2018 - Painting (Painting)
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches

In DUST 171217 Zhang Zhenyu uses fragments of dust collected across the city, and then creates dark abstract paintings, repetitively gluing the material to the canvas, applying up to 30 or 100 layers and sanding until he arrives at a smooth surface. The result is a reflective surface, an abstract object in which the viewer can see themselves staring back. The project began in 2014 and reflects a rampant process of modernization in his native China. Dust is in no short supply across the country, the byproduct of pollution, construction and development, dust is omnipresent, the fall out of human activity and bodily being, and so the attention that this work pays to these seemingly insignificant particles, operates to create awareness around its mass accumulation and the productive processes it is linked to.

Zhang Zhenyu’s practice is at once conceptual and material, best-known for his dust paintings series, repurposing found matter, transforming waste dust into a highly polished image, his work is a reflection upon the trace elements of urbanization and development. Prior to his dust series he meticulously collected newspapers, etching into the daily headlines, blending them into paper pulp, and making new paper. This ritualistic transformation of materials might be considered to enact a slowing down of the frenetic processes of the news cycle or the ‘modernization’ that it observes.

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