The artist, Zhang Yu, is a practitioner and champion of Chinese experimental ink painting (shuimo) art. From the beginning of the 1980s, concurrently with his creation of experimental ink painting, he has been active in editing and publishing, and in organizing research forums and other activities in the field of Chinese ink painting.

　　From 1991, when he first used the format of “fingerprints” to carry out experimental creation, with a new departure in 2001, and extending to the present Fingerprints series of works, one can see the constant process of transformation in Zhang Yu’s experimental art. Through the performance format of “fingerprints”, he on the one hand extends the traditional materials of ink painting to include silk, film, glass, spring water, finger-nail varnish and other media, thus constructing important factors in the text of the works. On the other hand, he links up with the traditional ritual of cultivation practice, that is, through a performance logic of real everyday life, he deconstructs the classical forms, language and formulas of traditional ink painting, and consequently allows the cultural value of experimental ink painting in the contemporary cultural context to achieve a kind of understanding and reconstruction. Thus the cultivation practice format of Zhang Yu’s fingerprint art is far from limited to the works themselves, but extends to the new possibility of ink painting seeking to construct a contemporary value in the context of contemporary culture, and to involve a series of questions about the modern paradigm shift in Chinese contemporary art, and even about its renewal and boundaries.

　　This is Zhang Yu’s first solo exhibition in Beijing. The experimental character of his art coincides with the efforts directed by Today Art Museum to actively take part in and promote the development of Chinese contemporary art. It is my hope that this exhibition will present to you an individual visual sample of Chinese experimental art, and to stimulate your attention and collegial discussion.

　　今日美术馆馆长 张子康

　　Zhang Zikang, Director, Today Art Gallery, 9 January 2011

　　Translation by Archibald McKenzie/Wen Zai, 13 January 2011

作者：张子康