Zhang Lingrui | The Lattice Pursuit: Squaer Room | Beijing

Within the paintings, the meticulously-arranged and repeated lattice reflect the cool precision of industrial aesthetics. However, once this geometric order appears on fabrics unintentionally folded by human intervention, it becomes a subject that Zhang Lingrui continually interrogates as checks subtly transform, becoming vessels deeply “patterned.” They seem to embody the shared principles that permeate Zhang Lingrui’s process: the tension between positive and negative forms on either side of the geometric boundaries; the gradual transition between warm and cool hues shaped by the undulations of the fabric; the subtle shifts in contour between thick and thin, solid and void; the lively interplay where brushstrokes and forms shape and activate one another. Every lattice, inevitably, functions as an independent unit that must be addressed one by one in the act of painting. Together, they can constitute a single image or conception of checked fabric caught in a space of contradiction, or they can be viewed as isolated fragments, upholding both their identity as tangible objects and as abstract factors intrinsic to the pictorial space. What these approaches share is a constant, restrained anchoring of the “lattice” at the boundary between figuration and abstraction, turning it into an extension by which the artist probes the limits of painting.

 

Lattice, through their geometric relationships and the configuration of hard-edged forms, generate a certain sense of order. Yet within the framework of this order, the spontaneous brushwork weaving across the grids, the low-saturation despite unmistakably nuanced color tendencies, and the vivid, concrete depiction of light’s gradations together introduce an element of chaos. The artist’s intent is not simply to present the opposition or balance between order and chaos, but to use the medium of time—inseparable from the practice of painting—to let painting speak for itself: to inquire into perception, form, and content, and to explore how greater richness and possibility can be achieved within the bounds of the canvas. This is the state that the artist strives to approach in the ongoing process of “investigating” the lattice—what might be called “the pursuit in lattice.”

 

Zhang Lingrui(b.1994) was born in Hefei, China. Zhang graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China) and Royal College of Art (London, UK) in 2017 and 2020, with a bachelor degree and a masters degree respectively. Zhang currently works and lives in Beijing. His recent exhibitions include: “Supercrowds / Supercommunity”, TANK Shanghai, Shanghai (2024); “En Route”, HdM Gallery, Beijing (2024); “Baroque”, Champ Lacombe, Biarritz(2023); “Day by Day, Good Day”, Union Pacific, London(2023); “Final, not over”, Unit 1 Gallery, London(2020) etc. His works have been exhibited at the West Bund Art Center in Shanghai, the Royal Academy of Arts in the UK and the CAA Art Museum in Hangzhou.