Zhang Yu is a prominent figure in the development of a contemporary response to the century to the century-long difficulty implicit in ink painting, namely how to answer the challenge of modernism. He resides in Tianjin, a strong base for the late twentieth-century experimental ink and wash movement. Since the later 1980s, Zhang Yu as an artist has been an innovator and, in his role as organizer of exhibitions and publishing projects, has actively promoted experimental ink painting.

　　Although Zhang Yu’s paintings are abstractions, for his major series, Divine Light (begun 1994), he devised a symbolic vocabulary composed of basic elements: light, the incomplete circle, and the broken square. From this limited range he is able to generate a wealth of meaning. He has said:“I regard the simple configuration of broken square or incomplete circle as a‘carrier,’and place it in a special black spatial field so that it seems to assume a suspended or floating state. It is a process of dialogue with and inquiry about the broken square, the incomplete circle, man, history, society, and this artificial world denuded of nature”(Zhang Yu, Chinese Artist [N.p.,2003],p.32). the central broken circle or square suggests an original generative source, the cosmic egg.

　　The spiritual dimension of Zhang Yu’s oeuvre is not limited to the Divine Light series; the ink itself carries spiritual connotations, first as it sets up the yin-yang dichotomy of dark and light when applied to paper and, second, as a fundamental signifier of Chinese culture. To employ ink and to further the cause of ink painting reaffirms the connection of the present to a tradition dating back millennia.

　　Lotte philipsen