Hongyu Zhang’s painting takes root in calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting. Each stroke of paint composing his portraits has its own existence and takes part in the expressive power of his striking “human landscapes”.
Hongyu Zhang was introduced from a young age to calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting by his uncle, who was a Fine Arts teacher. From this early learning process, he kept a predilection for Indian Ink, who he uses today jointly with other techniques like acrylic, oil paint and pastel.
After graduating at Mongolia’s School of Fine Arts, Hongyu chose to pursue his studies in France, where he now lives. When asked what took him to Europe, he names Kafka’s work, Munch, Schiele or Soutine’s paintings…Fascinated by these masters of expressionism, the artist made their quest his: “to expose the human mind at the climax of its psychological state”.
The characters in his portraits don’t exist: “each portrait is me”, he says. The line creates the fundamental unity of all his works. He draws on a frame directly on the floor, with music helping him to find the strength, rhythm and movement of each one of them: “sometimes, to draw a line, I jump or even dance…I want to make my lines travel. Each line has its own existence, and all of them create an energetic space”.
An energetic space that draws us to it and magnetizes us, inviting us to sight-read this nervous writing, which seems to have been invented to understand the soul’s depths.
Below, some pictures taken during our visit at Hongyu Zhang’s workshop.
