ZHANG Ruyi

©ZHANG Ruyi, Shanghai, China, 2019

Design: QIAN Jing

Paper: Munken, Paper Paper

Print: Shanghai Nasa Artistic Printing

Number of copies: 200

Zhang Ruyi

The artist ZHANG Ruyi's eponymous catalogue "ZHANG Ruyi" was published by Skira, a world-renowned art publisher, printed and released in Italy.This catalogue is the first publicly released collection of ZHANG Ruyi's work, as well as the most comprehensive publication that records her artistic process over the past decade since her first solo exhibition in 2011.

The publication is edited by independent art critic and curator Manuela Lietti. The publication also pays homage to ZHANG's creative universe through the writings of three leading scholars - Karen Smith, WU Mo and QIU Yun.

“Rather than creating work as a site-specific practice, Zhang Ruyi riffs on notions of site-specificity as a space in which all the customary responses to art-viewing are suspended. Sites of exhibition become non-specific, neutralised, the better to appreciate the true concern of her art, which is not to be found located in the elements she introduces per se, in the sense of their being physical entities in their own right (even where they are “available” as individual artworks), but instead in the invisible; in the very air and the atmospherics that they generate between them. Thus, while resonating emotional detachment, Zhang Ruyi’s art is, at the same time, about connecting. Simply, “[m]y work mainly explores the relationship between people, materials, and space”.

——Karen Smith

“But it is also extremely clear that Zhang does not passively repeat and layer symbols. Her recurring use of several motifs is more akin to nurturing branches from a conceptual tree. They are always developing, never static. They grow on their own, but they also embody a hidden conceptual throughline: art is a pathway that allows the artist to navigate the self and reality, the internal and external, the intuitive and rational. She particularly excels at establishing a given space as a vessel that can hold these conceptual branches. In these spaces, she produces conflicts between different motifs, but she also finds methods of mediation”. 

——WU Mo

Since Albert Skira founded Skira Publishing House in 1928, he had been committed to creating a space and platform for artistic dialogue and encounters akin to Paris Salon. During these early years, Skira's determination and passion led it to work with the greatest artists, from Picasso and Matisse to the surrealists. In recent years, Skira has developed into a major art publisher in Italy and Europe. In addition to publishing works for famous art institutions such as the Louvre and the Picasso Museum, it also cooperates with important galleries and architects such as Jean-Michel Wilmotte.