Jul 25, 2017
Zhang Peili’s “Record. Repeat.” - The Art Institute of Chicago
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Zhang Peili’s “Record. Repeat.” - The Art Institute of Chicago
Record. Repeat. Zhang Peili. Video art.
Zhang Peili (b. 1957) is considered one of the first Chinese artists to work with video. His videos depict series of repetitive acts - breaking a mirror, reading, looking out the window - which, despite their banal nature, are rendered unfamiliar through Zhang’s usage of close-ups and unusual camera angles. Through his work, Zhang aims to critique the role of art and entertainment in everyday life.
Record. Repeat. is a survey of Zhang’s work that is currently being exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it will run through July 9, 2017. The exhibition traces the development of Zhang’s experiments with video art, the earliest of which date back to the late 1980s. One of the video installations, A Scene in Black and White Unfolded Four Times (2007), consists of a series of LCD screens displaying picturesque black-and-white digital photographs of Venice Water Town in Hangzhou, China. However, when viewers attempt to step closer, a sensor is triggered and the transmission of the images is interrupted with fuzz and static.