Artists

Pedro Zhang

Press release

In Phantom Tales, his debut solo exhibition at Monitor Gallery, Pedro Zhang presents a body of work centred on the practice of painting and a deep engagement with its inherent conventions. Exploring ideas of suspended narrative and transience, Zhang approaches the notion of a vast, transversal existence that reveals itself in momentary, almost ephemeral, situations. The dichotomy found in interpreting events – in the time that connects them or in the imagery that links them – suggests a romantic sensibility. This is not, however, a nostalgic examination of transcendence seen through the eyes of the beautiful or the sublime, as in the influential 19th-century tradition. Instead, it is a process that intuits the manifestation of transcendence itself, grounded in mystery and the curiosity of the search. The emphasis, then, is on privileging the promise held within the quest, rather than the overwhelming finality of the discovery. In this sense, the artist invites us to investigate his compositions, deliberately obscuring what is shown to the eye. Rooted in an intrinsic understanding of painting, this approach is dictated by how the works are made, carefully managing the relationship between image and the physical presence it assumes on the canvas. The compositions allude to enigmatic locales and moments, invoking plant, animal, and human life, almost always rendered in a nocturnal atmosphere. Across distinct planes of existence, Zhang overlays references to geographical distance (earth and sky, mountains, sea, and stars) with markers of bodily intimacy (such as hands and fate lines), detaching from their origins, drifting across multiple canvases. Consequently, each component emerges as a fragment of a larger reality, where light and shadow exist in a state of transition, within a space that extends beyond the frame. Zhang gives form to his works by engaging intimately with the materiality of oil paint – its colour, luminosity, viscosity, and texture – resolving it within the specific grain of the canvas and the nature of the applying gesture. Note how the oil asserts its own presence; how the impasto is attentively manipulated to create points of tension across the composition. Observe, for instance, the flower petals that gain substance and cloud the figure (Herbarium, 2026), the elements marking the cardinal points (Cardinal Direction, 2026), or the marks that resemble celestial stars (Chasing Where Dreams Go to Rest, 2026 and Looking for the Far Side of the Moon, 2026). One might say that as the material acquires body, it dissolves the image yet profoundly informs the object—much like in Goya's famed works, where an understanding of blindness comes not from depicted empty eyesockets, but from the thick weight of the paint or the expressive furrow it leaves behind. The gesture answers to the scale of the wrist, yet simultaneously reaches for another dimension, exploring the ambiguity between a detail in sharp focus and the breadth of an implied territory. It is in the management of this dynamic – a dance between gaze and material, in a process both dense and agile – that images transform into painting, and painting transforms into romance. Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues