Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the solo exhibition “Narration: Action Poem” by artist Zhang Hui, opening on October 4, 2025, at Tang Contemporary Art Hong Kong, Central space.

Several years ago, while teaching, Zhang Hui painted from a model. At first, it was merely an exercise in studying form, proportion, structure, and musculature. The model was simply an object. Yet over time, Zhang realized the models were more than that: they had a social identity, they were a living human being. Still, in practice, when drawing a model, the subject is not portrayed as a person but used as a medium for training. Thus, the model’s identity becomes strange—both “a person” and, at the same time, like a plaster cast, a kind of “for-example person.” From this realization, Zhang began broader reflections on shifts in subjects and perspectives throughout art history: from depictions of gods and popes in religious painting, to monarchs, to the emergence of democracy and freedom after the French Revolution of 1789; from looking up at divinity, to gazing upon kings, to the leveled gaze of the Impressionists. Over time, humans shifted from being accessories to gods into objects that could be regarded directly. This historical trajectory inspired Zhang’s understanding of the “for-example person”—at once an object, and a node within a larger sequence.

Gallery address: 10/F, H Queen's, Central