Xinjun Zhang

Born 1983 in Zhengzhou/China.

Xinjun Zhang received his master’s degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, China. In his works, he focuses on installation and performance art, often using multimedia devices.

Since 2012 Xinjun Zhang has hosted exhibitions and performances utilizing »unstable spaces« near his residence, including I am Close with Your Husband, an installation in a deserted villa at the outskirts of Beijing, the performance Rolling on the Railway, and a performance executed on the day he opened his studio to the public.

In 2011, during an artist residency in Vienna/Austria, Xinjun Zhang invited local artists to plan, perform and present the exhibition Sauna at the site of the residency. Together with artists from Portugal and Brazil he planned and presented Never Mind the Space Between Us in 2014, an international exhibition in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Lisbon/Portugal and Beijing. His works were also exhibited at solo shows, such as at Telescope, a nonprofit space run by James Elaine in Beijing. He was part of the show You can only think about something if you think about something else at the Times Museum, Guangzhou/China, and of the 2nd CAFAM Future Exhibition at the Beijing Art Academy.

He selects and uses materials based on the experiences of his everyday life. Some of these materials include thread, primary school desks, drawers, sleeping bags, and canvas. Since 2012, Xinjun Zhang focuses on the importance of the actual site of production for the making of his work. For the piece Woodssleepingbags he invited friends out on a cold night in the woods close to his home. There he surprised them with an uncanny double of his own living space (a bedroom and a toilet) made out of sleeping bags: The Room Next to Anus. Later, he moved the piece from the woods to the CAFAM’s museum space to show it in a different shape. Recently, he went into the woods to find a hole inside a dead tree. He made a cast of the hole and enlarged the shape with the help of geometry and mathematics to present it in his solo show Folds in 2015.

In 2015 he received a fellowship from the OMI International Arts Center, Ghent, NY/USA.