ArtDepot is pleased to announce that it will present Lin Zhi's solo exhibition "Today Should Be A Good Day" in Beijing 798 Art Zone, featuring selected easel paintings from 2020-2024. The exhibition will open on Saturday, September 21, 2024 and will run until October 26, 2024.
Preface:
Lin Zhi's artistic process is deeply rooted in "feeling," beginning with memories and shaped by the complex interplay of beliefs in his environment. His childhood is steeped in the primary school where his father worked, in a small town where the school stood beside a Christian church. The church’s spire and stained glass windows formed his first experience of the “sacred.” Hymns accompanied his early years, while the town’s belief in numerology coexisted, reflecting a cultural landscape where different faiths intertwined. This early exposure led Lin Zhi to contemplate the composition of the world, eventually seeing all things—people, animals, mountains, rivers, and trees—as forms of energy, interconnected through attraction and repulsion. When discussing his work, Lin Zhi emphasizes this sensitivity to feeling, carefully considering every object and brushstroke before it enters his paintings.
Years spent living in Thailand gave Lin Zhi deeper exposure to the country’s diverse cultural and spiritual tapestry. For him, Thailand became a vibrant testing ground for the interaction of cultural beliefs, with Buddhism as the state religion, natural deities, and the influence of Christianity and Catholicism introduced by colonists. This convergence of cultures and spiritual beliefs also reflected the complex social and political relationships in the region. In Lin Zhi's work, however, foreign religions are not reduced to mere symbols or visual elements; instead, his focus lies on the presence and experience of "God." Through meditation, he creates an environment that allows him to access the emotional depth required for his art, channeling his reflections into the canvas.
Lin Zhi’s earlier works, influenced by Basquiat, are marked by vivid, energetic strokes and a Southeast Asian aesthetic infused with high-purity, fluorescent colors. Yet Lin Zhi now reflects on this period as overly “bright and noisy,” lacking a lasting depth. After returning to China in 2020, he found himself in an unfamiliar environment, one further distorted by the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic. This experience heightened his sense of disconnection, leading painting to become a way for him to regain control over his life and his art. In this new phase, Lin Zhi’s palette has shifted to more subdued tones—black, white, and gold—expressed with restraint. Emotional expression is tempered, and simplicity, balance, and calm have emerged as the new cornerstones of his work.
Born in 1988 in Shantou, Guangdong Province, Lin Zhi began to write novels with the theme of "ONE CHILD" in 2007. In 2011, a clear image of "ONE CHILD" appeared in Lin Zhi's works, which continues to run through Lin Zhi's creation process and still appears in his works as an important carrier. Lin Zhi intentionally stripped away the light and shadow shaping and realistic techniques emphasized in the representational painting of traditional colleges, and the habit of often using his left hand to paint made his pictures show a calm and sincere painting. Meanwhile, his past life experience gave him sufficient nourishment for discussing faith and the existence of nature.
"Today Should Be A Good Day" will run until October 26, 2024.
