In her paintings, drawings, and prints, Zhang Xiaoli (b.1989) transforms classical Chinese mediums to create nuanced, captivating images that are at once playful and contemplative. The pictorial world of Zhang Xiaoli is composed of classically-inspired landscapes, ancient games, science, and its mystical counterparts. Her eclectic choices of subject matter stem partly from her unique experience of double majoring in Fine Arts and Biology while at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The supposedly opposing forces that are art and science find new harmony in Zhang’s artistic creations, offering holistic ways of understanding the world.

The interdisciplinary approach taken by the artist allows Zhang to collect elements from different domains—cosmology, physics, alchemy, biology, Chinese philosophy—and synthesize them into an integrated whole that imitates a kind of mental “cabinet of curiosities.” Her series Spiritual Wunderkammern draws from these inspirations and explores the clash of ideologies in an age of information overload. By juxtaposing classical landscapes with modern inventions and scientific references, Zhang investigates how one combines these different schools of thought in creating a virtual wunderkammern.

Classically inspired landscapes have remained an essential part in Zhang Xiaoli’s work. From her early project Dialogue Between Pop Culture and Traditional Chinese Painting, where she introduced the visual vocabulary of Lego toys to traditional Chinese landscape paintings, to her most recent project Surrealism in Landscape, landscape provides a nodal point in understanding Zhang’s practice. In Portable Landscape series, it is the bridge that connects tradition with contemporary culture, especially consumerism. Elsewhere, landscapes are elements of a game, an entry point towards Dao, or spiritual retreats during a pandemic. In creating what she calls the “postmodern landscapes” of this era, Zhang Xiaoli signals a pictorial return to nature and classicism, and injects this timeless tradition with a renewed confidence.