Join a conversation with one of China’s premier contemporary artists right here in Boston! Video artist and former Gardner Museum Artist-in-Residence Zhang Peili returns to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Thursday, April 23rd at 6:30 PM to discuss the history and the future of video in China and preview some of his recent work. Zhang will be joined by Jane Farver, Director of MIT’s List Visual Arts Center; Karen Oen of MIT’s PhD program; and Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner Museum.

A pioneer in contemporary Chinese art, Zhang uses photography and video to examine the cultural norms and social values that shape attitudes of human behavior. He is known for his clean and incisive style and for work that often challenges contemporary Chinese social constraints while playfully targeting traditional authoritarian roles. In his 2008 work, A Gust of Wind (shown above), Zhang built an indoor environment and then demolished it artificially. The exhibition was the ruin itself and the video process of making it. As part of the conversation at the Gardner, Zhang will discuss recent works like A Gust of Wind and their relationship to current trends in Chinese video art.

Zhang lives and works in Hangzhou, China, where he is the Dean of the New Media Department at the Hangzhou China Academy of Fine Arts. One of the country's foremost video artists, his work has been shown throughout the world. In the United States, he has shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is represented by the Tilton Gallery. Zhang lived and worked at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as an Artist-in-Residence in 2008.