Zhang Ke - Flames are another folds that cant't be smoothed out

About

Zhang Ke is a young Chinese artist born in 1996. She completed art studies at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts between 2014 and 2018, to subsequently devote herself to the academic study started in 2019 and still ongoing in England. Looking at some of her works, the attention that the young artist reserves to the theme of nature and the relationship between the latter and man appears very evident. We could already immediately fix some important points that belong to the poetics of Zhang Ke which in synthesis, thus appear: Nature as an element of inspiration in relation to the presence of man, dreams and desire, the space of the night. All this in Zhang Ke has the form of a tale and in her painting, in fact, small stories are celebrated characterized by colors very often belonging to the range of greens and blues with almost enchanted lights. The pictorial tales of Zhang Ke are dreams, they are thoughts that move into the field of a certain painting close to the world of Surrealism and it is clear, evident, after observing her creations; his closeness to the surreal lyricism, to the forms and elements that the artist creates, led me to bring some of his paintings closer to the world of the great English artist Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), unique and singular interpreter of an art that he stared at the scream and the force of nature, watched by the eye of man. In particular, there are two works by Zhang Ke that establish a point of closeness with the thought and painting of the great English artist mentioned; both are characterized by the presence of man-made objects (mirrors) of great symbolism in art. These objects are the protagonists of two paintings in which nature, between leaves and brambles, envelops, fills, invades. All this is a metaphor and the subject of the mirror represents nothing but the desire to reflect a condition that the artist wishes to highlight, creating magic and restlessness. Then there is another work, different from the previous ones, always painted with those dreamy and introspective colors, which Zhang Ke uses so much in his painting: it is a figure-mannequin ready to become a living and dynamic form in the act of taking flight. towards a different dimension. Our young artist is at the beginning of her journey on the path of art and we urge her to continue in deep research, in comparison with the great masters of 20th century painting, so that her poetics can always reach the right maturity of the material. together with thought, fundamental elements for the birth of the works that Zhang Ke will want to create.