Whimsical Maze: Zhang Xiaoli

Zhang Xiaoli seeks to transcend the inherent forms of traditional Chinese painting within the contemporary art scene. She integrates concepts such as LEGO components, puzzle games, box and containers, scientific themes, and mysticism, building a multi-dimensional spiritual landscape and a space of interweaving, overlapping, and looping that crosses the boundaries of East and West. Viewing her works is like stepping into a fantasy world, where different elements are intertwined and combined, building a parallel universe that transcends time and space through multiple planes. The traditional Gongbi technique, elegant gardens, and the symbolic components from traditional paintings are juxtaposed with Western scientific experiments and philosophy, exploring the spatiality and relationships between objects. The two-dimensional surfaces present multi-dimensional depth, thereby breaking traditional notions of flatness.

Mountain Villa OF Embracing Beauty

The classical gardens in Suzhou aim to recreate the wonders of nature within arm's reach, with each component — a rock or a little pond, a cave or an elegant courtyard — embodying the aesthetic essence of traditional Chinese landscape paintings and poetry. The Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty, renowned for its ingeniously crafted rockery, is hailed as the "crown of Suzhou's rockeries." These scholarly rocks, originally featuring caves and chambers, are designed in a looping pattern with bridges and corridors, harmonizing with the surrounding water to form a seamless unity.

In 2019, during the artist Zhang Xiaoli’s first visit to the Garden of Embracing Beauty, the intricate structures of its scholarly rocks captivated her as she sketched and copied them. In 2020, Xiaoli was invited to participate in a project, leading to multiple trips to the garden in search of artistic inspiration. A moment of serendipity occurred when she noticed the shimmering ripples of water reflecting on the rocks, creating a dynamic interplay with the rugged rocks. At that moment, the rocks ceased to be merely a tangible object; it merged with time and environment, transforming from mere substance to ethereal presence. With that, Xiaoli’s perception of the rocks transcended rational understanding, becoming a dialogue between herself and her surroundings, blurring the boundaries of objectivity and subjectivity. As she created the painting Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty later in 2023, Xiaoli rendered the scholarly rocks in two fashions, inviting viewers to traverse between the realms of reality and mental space.

Today, the Garden of Embracing Beauty, functioning as a "park," has fenced off a path through the rocks, restricting visitors to retrace their steps and contemplate from alternative perspectives. Zhang Xiaoli’s painting Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty also responds to this experience of admiring the rocks from a distance. Rendered playfully with a deconstructive approach, the painting’s surreal overlapping spaces resonate with the metamorphosing impressions of the garden as one wanders in it. The pavilions and corridors in the painting shift based upon Xiaoli’s own impression of the garden. The intricate paths, reminiscent of the hidden trails in traditional Chinese landscape paintings, guide the flow of time and space, leading the viewers to meander. The irrational doorways and windows, echoing through the painting, resemble the mountain entrances to the land of Peach Blossom spring in a Chinese fable. With each fleeting glimpse through the maze and the mist, the viewers gaze into wonders beyond the confines of the garden and beyond the artwork.

Learning from Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell, an acclaimed American modern surrealist artist, gained recognition for his practice of preserving collected objects in glass shadow boxes. To him, these seemingly outdated and useless items held precious stories. His rich imagination wove these relics of the past together, often infusing them with the delicate scent of nostalgia. Despite their confinement within the box, these compositions transcend the boundaries of time and space to embody the beauty of the commonplace.

Learning from Cornell emerges like an artistic dialogue between Cornell and Zhao Xiaoli. Post her 2014 graduation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Zhang embarked on an odyssey in the city. Each brief sojourn in her small rented apartment, almost always lasting just a year, transforms that small room into a vessel for memories of that time period. Zhang likened herself to "an annual herb, rooted, sprouted, and flourished for a year in a box-like space; then leaves fell, roots left, only to take root and sprout again in another space." For Zhang, a box emerges as a narrative space, cradling tales and capturing fleeting moments, resonating with Cornell’s nostalgic conception.

The inspiration for Learning from Cornell came from an amusing misinterpretation. Xiaoli once mistakenly perceived a figure in Cornell’s work, riding a horse and leaping over a wooden stake, as a tree. Upon realizing the error, she was both surprised by how two seemingly unrelated imagery intertwined in her eyes, but also found it strangely reasonable. Just similar to the rabbit-duck illusion, the same image could be interpreted in two different ways. The twisted and coiled appearance of trees in traditional Chinese painting left an imprint on Zhao Xiaoli’s visual perception. The cultural background that Xiaoli grew up in profoundly and perpetually influences how she perceives the world.

Reflecting on Learning from Cornell, the work echoes the artist’s mental expanse at that particular moment. Here, a tree could be a symbol of Xiaoli’s contemporary attachment to literati culture, or a "spiritual landscape" of solitude amid the bustling city.

The Story of Stones

The philosophical appreciation of rocks is considered an art of mental states by literati artists and poets. Viewed as miniature representations of the natural world, rocks and their ever-changing forms evoke diverse and enchanting associations with nature. As observers calmly and mindfully contemplate a rock, they resonate with its essence and immerse themselves in its eccentricity.

In her portable artist book The Story of Stones, Zhao Xiaoli mirrors the meditative process of rock appreciation, collapsing the separation between the observer and the rocks to reconstruct a more intimate relationship with nature. Leveraging the foldable nature of books with her deconstructive application of color, Zhang continuously folds the rocks, exploring the multidimensional space created by strange rocks both physically and metaphorically. As the pages flip, the scenery shifts, transporting viewers through time and space. The rocks, stacked in a compressed space, unfold infinite possibilities, allowing observers to embark on an intimate excursion into the wonders of nature.