Evian Wenyi Zhang was born in Shanghai in 2000 and is now based in Shanghai and New York. She uses a distinctive image information mapping system at the core of her work, re-segmenting existing images into several pixel grids and rearranging each visual element in a sequence of her personal observation. Lines and color blocks are programmed into the grid system as a sort of data.
Zhang sees her practice as an evolving methodology with both analytical and emotional qualities, inspired by the interrelationship between the observer and the observed. Each small unit on the canvas represents ephemeral visual focal points for the observer, which the artist extracts from their original sources. These independent and discrete scenes indicate the alteration of authentic pictorial data requested by pictorial idealism, as well as the contradiction between the individual visual experience and the collective imagination.