- Zhang Shangfeng｜The Edge of the Possible
- 2026｜09.19 - 10.31
- Lin & Lin Gallery
Lin & Lin Gallery is pleased to present The Edge of Possible, the first Taiwan solo exhibition of artist Zhang Shangfeng in September. In the highly rational, precise and systematic modern life, experiences once connected to myth, ritual, folk belief, and collective memory have not simply faded or disappeared with the passage of time. Instead, they lie latent in the subconscious and daily behaviors, continuing to shape the ways we understand the world, perceive relationships, and confront the unknown.
Through his depiction of figure and gestures, and arrangement and composition of objects in space, the artist picks up on the past mode of perception, placing figures in an ambiguous realm between myth and mortal, to refocusing on those who survive in the cracks of contemporary consumer society, and revealing his concern and critique of nowadays.
“What these paintings open up is not an imagined world of the past, but the possibility of another way of sensing reality.”
——Zhang Shengfeng
On the other hand, in terms of brushwork and color, repeated applying of acrylic and oil paint builds fractured, seeping strokes into a rounded, dense texture; a simple vivid stroke of clothing color illuminates the sallow, dim space, drawing the audiences' gaze toward the crooked, hunchback figures with vacant eyes—the interplay of immense and minute, divinity and the mundane, creates a pictorial tension that feels both familiar and strange, yet confusing.
In these works, Zhang does not dwell on the distant past, but instead gazes upon the ceaselessly iterating present—large hands holding tobacco, the disarray of cups and plates under night falls, desks scattered with documents, and other workplaces. Fragments of daily life and moments of stillness are juxtaposed on the canvas and the silent, isolated figures he paints wander along the boundary where myth and reality intertwine. Against the plain and the dim, it reflects the fatigue and powerlessness of the individual within contemporary social structures, to reawaken perceptions long obscured by habituation.
Zhang Shangfeng was born in Xian, China in 1998, and currently lives and works in Xian. Graduated from the Department of oil painting in Xian Academy of Fine Arts, participated in an exchange student program at the University of Arts in Belgrade, and later earned his master's degree in oil painting from the Xian Academy of Fine Arts. Portraiture is the main subject of his painting. Rather than engaging with myth through grand narratives or heroic figures, he brings it into the present, locating it within the textures of everyday life, maintaining a measured distance through an intensified awareness of self. His selected solo exhibitions, including The Edge of the Possible, Lin & Lin Gallery, Taiwan, Taipei, 2026; The Discourse of Neo-Mythmaking, BONIAN SPACE, Beijing, China, 2025. His selected group exhibition, including Figurative impression: in plain sight, Hurst contemporary, London, United Kingdom, 2025; Homo Victor, WILLOW ART SPACE, London, United Kingdom, 2024; The Group Show Part.2, The Untitled Void, Seoul, Korea, 2024; Thoughts in the Silent Night, Hewood gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2024.
