O Zhang

O Zhang’s recent photographic and video work makes use of what we might find familiar both in what seem like journalistic forms and those derived from advertising or other media-driven content. Zhang employs such formats as a means of entry into less familiar and less inviting notions of social-economic imbalance both in her home country and abroad and in doing so often illustrates how illusive these things can seem from different cultural vantages. The images often counter their meanings in their lush color and elegant compositions drawing the viewer in only to reveal the hidden underpinnings of their reality.

O Zhang was the recipient of The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Artist Fellowship(NY), Wilson Centre for Photography fellowship and Fuji Film Student Awards(London), winner of RCA Photography Graduate Award (London), and nominated/short listed for numerous awards including Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (Beijing), Beck's Future Award (London), Creative Capital Awards and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (NY).

O Zhang has had solo exhibitions in Beijing, London and Manchester, has been invited to give lecture in Oxford University. Her work has been included in group shows throughout Europe, America and China, including Kunsthalle Museum (Hamburg), Museum of Modern Art (Salzburg), Kunstmuseum (Bern), Folkwang Museum (Essen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai), Millennium Monument Art Museum (Beijing) and is in the collections of Guggenheim Museum (NY), Santa Barbara Museum (CA), Clifford Chance Art Collection (London), Millennium Monument Art Museum collection (Beijing), and other private collections including Uli Sigg collection in Switzerland.

O Zhang was born in Guangzhou, China in 1976. She currently lives and works in New York and Beijing.

O Zhang is also represented by Pekin Fine Arts in Beijing and by FA Projects in London. (text taken from CRG Gallery, NY)