Text and Photography Julian Lucas

Photography is often about the process. In her current exhibition, For the Sake of… the Artifice! Chinese artist Zhang Mengjiao expressed just that. The exhibition, curated by Yiwei Lu on display at the Kylin Gallery in Beverly Hills, includes two of Zhang's latest photography series, Flat Power, and We Don’t Speak the Same Language.

In her body of work entitled, Flat Power, Zhang successfully presents an in-depth probe of beauty among Chinese women and its permutations within Chinese social media. Her still images present a surreal movement as if within a performance art piece, but the work also activates the same senses as when one stares at and grasps every detail of a sculpture.

In We Don’t Speak the Same Language, Zhang explores and challenges what we think of as “man-made,” by revisiting the zoo but not having the same feelings as she did when visiting the zoo as a young child. Her work gives detailed attention to the mundane, artificial landscapes, while juxtaposing them against natural landscapes and such man-made artifacts as power lines and wallpaper pasted on the walls and doors of the animal exhibits.

For the Sake of…the Artifice! is on display at the Kylin Gallery and runs through July 3rd.
Visit the Kylin Gallery by appointment
8634 Wilshire Blvd,
Beverly Hills, CA 90211