Artist Stella Zhang explores her personal journey as an immigrant and woman

0 — Viewpoint
In a series of five provocative and luminous new installation works, contemporary artist Stella Zhang explores her personal journey as an immigrant and woman in the first major Bay Area exhibition of her work at the Chinese Culture Center

April 23 – September 5, 2010


SAN FRANCISCO – A field of soft and suggestive pillow-like forms lies on the ground inviting touch, but bristles with sharp points. Gentle smoke drifts lazily on a video screen surrounded by nails that anchor tautly stretched fabric, pulling in conflicting directions. In the work of contemporary artist Stella Zhang, alluring organic forms hint at tenderness and vulnerability while unexpected creases, spikes and smears of sand allude to a more complex and agitated landscape of feelings beneath the surface.

This spring, the Chinese Culture Center (CCC) of San Francisco continues its Xian Rui (Fresh and Sharp) exhibition series with 0 – Viewpoint, the first major Bay Area solo exhibition of the work of contemporary artist Stella Zhang. With five dramatic all-white installation works, Zhang, who has worked primarily as a painter in China, Japan and now the Bay Area, makes her first foray into sculptural work to continue her deeply personal and often provocative exploration of identity – as an immigrant, a woman and artist. The exhibition, which is free to the public, is on view April 23 – September 5, 2010 and opens with a public reception on April 22 at 6 p.m.

0 – Viewpoint is CCC’s third exhibition in the Xian Rui series that features the work of prominent, emerging Chinese-American contemporary artists. Zhang was born in Beijing in 1965 to a family of artists. Her father, a famous brush painter, pushed her to pursue traditional Chinese arts. She was classically trained, receiving her BFA at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. Searching for new ideas, she moved to Tokyo to pursue her MFA at Tokyo Art University and stayed for 12 years. Her work is in the permanent collection of both the Fine Arts Museum in Beijing and the Tan Shin Fine Arts Museum in Tokyo. She arrived in the United Stated in 2003 and settled four years ago in Palo Alto, CA with her young daughter.

This continual movement through cultures exerts a powerful force on Zhang’s ongoing artistic search for self that she calls “0.” “What appears in my work is the result of a real individual being shaped time and again by cultural forces and reaching for new equilibrium,” she says. “In a new place, I must learn again about grief and pain, law and power, questions of identity, behavior and society and all kinds of realities that exist in my new home. Living at the intersection of cultures agitates my work.”

This agitation is evident in a piece like 0 – Viewpoint #3, one of the five installations in the show. On three large canvases, Zhang has wrestled with layer upon layer of white fabric. The resulting relief is both serene and troubled. Zhang’s work embodies contradiction and contains a challenging mix of emotions, struggles and sexuality, “like a mood that is troubled,” she says. In 0 – Viewpoint #5, Zhang mixes sand, water, glue and white pigment on twelve panels that reflect her shifting moods from one menstrual cycle to another.

CCC curator and program director Abby Chen believes that Zhang’s intimate and personal work may excite a degree of controversy within the community. “Stella’s work feels very private and naked in a sense, but her intent is to ask people to explore that with her and to come to their own viewpoint,” she says. “Her impulses may put some people outside of their comfort zone in our neighborhood, but the goal of Xian Rui is to challenge perceptions and probe boundaries and Stella’s work is a provocative and important invitation to the public to see their own stories within hers.”

0 – Viewpoint is on view Tuesdays – Saturdays 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Sundays 12 – 4 p.m. at Chinese Culture Center, 750 Kearny St., 3rd Floor (inside the Hilton Hotel). Admission to the gallery is free. For more information, the public should visit http://www.c-c-c.org or call 415-986-1822.

0 – Viewpoint is presented in partnership with the Hilton Hotel San Francisco Financial District. The Xian Rui (Fresh and Sharp) exhibition series for 2008-2010 is funded by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation. Other support provided by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, the members of Chinese Culture Center and individual supporters.

Related Programming

April 22, 2010 at 6 PM
Opening Reception
Free preview reception for the public

June 24, 2010 at 6 PM
Artist Talk
Artist Stella Zhang discusses her work and the installations in the exhibition

About the Chinese Culture Center
The Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco is a community-based, non-profit organization established in 1965 to foster the understanding and appreciation of Chinese and Chinese American art, history, and culture in the United States. The Center is a destination for exploring, envisioning and connecting progressive perspectives on Chinese and Chinese American art and heritage. Since 1981, the Center has increasingly developed programs of contemporary relevance such as the Xian Rui (Fresh and Sharp) series and the Present Tense Biennial.