Zhang Peili, an active artist involved in the ’85 New Wave, is crowned as the “father of video art in China”. His artworks cover numerous categories, including photos, comprehensive materials, single-channel videos, multi-channel videos, video installations, etc. He also focuses on the art’s connection and interference with reality and values the criticism and self-criticism of art language.

In the early 2000s, Zhang Peili stopped much of his video-making for the purpose of recording and research. Instead, he turned to adapting the ready-made videos. By repetition and editing, he blurred the representation of images and made them more symbolic. When the viewers’ senses are agitated, Zhang’s works become appreciably symbolic. As such, he emphasizes on the attitude of his art language—symbols themselves make the works.

For Zhang Peili, each work is an experimental response to specific context and problems. Take Continuous Reproduction 25 Times for example. He took a photo of a smiling farmer (from People’s Pictorial in 1970), brought it to Paris, and asked a photographer to make 25 consecutive copies of the photo. As a result, this black-and-white image became increasingly granular, mottled and abstract until the figure gradually disappeared. These reproduced images arranged in a row show the gradual changes from the original to the copies. By repeatedly blurring the subject, the symbol, carried by the image, is gradually presented.

(Edited by Li Hanning & Yang Zhige, 2021)