Zhang Xiaolu creates portraits that bend expectations, combining abstraction with a sense of humor. As a young artist in China she studied traditional Chinese painting, before entering the masters program at SCAD, where she began to experiment with the bold colors and abstract gestures that characterize her works today. “I use a lot of bright, artificial colors and emphasize the sense of self appearance…” Zhang has said. “Because they are really bright and pretty, like fireworks, they also could disappear very soon.” The result is works that can appear, at first glance, as if they were scribbled-on black-and-white photographs, with colorful details obscuring faces and forms.