Zhang Yue - If I Could

“You Miss the Truth”, Zhang‘s first solo exhibition (Gallery Yang, 2014), informed us the fact that Zhang had served a sentence in prison. And its first work was also induced by that fact: daily fragments in prison recorded via paintings. Hitherto, his prison-related projects include: “Blockade”, “Prisoner Code of Conduct”, “2003051420070427”, “The Never Items in Jail”, “The Archives of Orgasm”, and “Painting Project”. The prison as a miniature of the society stimulated the artist’s first important reconstruction of values: he observed, recorded, participated, reflected, and organized and published the results in the form of art. In his work “Silver Salman 00001” (2013), the sperm stem-cell of the fish is stipulated, its pivotal life nodes are described, and how it was made into various products after capture are detailed. Using methods of a researcher, Zhang tried to construct a dossier of an individual organism, which involved biology, physics, oceanography, engineering, history, etc. And "Various Kinds of White by Zhang Yue" is the work that proclaimed the birth of Zhang the researcher of self. In the course of a year, he laboriously analyzed 8136 kinds of whiteness he collected, using the method of eye-estimating and the principle of Pantone Code. In fact, this encyclopedia of whiteness is a work of chronological history. In his 2015 project "About the War in Northern Myanmar", his personal experience is a vital catalyst for a series of things he did afterwards. In the form of personal practice, he explored the truth or falsity of the history and reality we are informed, and step by step, constructed a world view as he sees and attains.