#8_2024 The song of Ashes Zihan Teng

Vernissage 03.10.2024 | 19 Uhr

Exhibition: 04.10.2024 - 13.10.2024 

“The Ashes, the lightest of the ruins, can be completely destroyed by a gust of wind.” Flags, chairs, cushions, branches, boxes... Zihan Teng covered everything in ashes and displayed it in the space .This gives the viewer a sense of the distant, lifeless world from a quiet, empty, meditative, enclosed space. Among the items covered in ashes were not only his reflections on nationalism, but also many of the everyday objects that accompanied his childhood. When one is in the ashes, intimacy, warmth, and hope are things that are more valued, and that intimacy is more profound.

History is present in an admirably unclingy way in the work ‘Let us march towards the ashes!’, where ashy flags are the residue of the consequences of contemporary nationalisms and wars.

The artist’s another works“KISSEN” are more nostalgic and intimiste, dealing with a more personal history rather than the collective one. But in Teng’s works intimism is not synonym of atomized, as gazing within allows the artist to stretch his gaze towards the future, dragging the viewer to a sense of hope and a levity that does not lack depth.

Zihan Teng was born in 1998 in Shandong, China. He lives and works in München, Germany,studies Freie Kunst bei Prof.in Schirin Kretschmann, Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (AdBK), Germany.

Zihan Teng often works with everyday materials such as grease, ash, iron, soap, salt, concrete or glue, which he deliberately exposes to different influences, such as light, wind, temperature changes, odours or sounds, over varying periods of time. By doing so, he at times brings about a radical transformation in the material’s appearance and texture, or even an almost complete disintegration or decay of the original object. In Teng’s work, we are faced with history and conceptualized representations of differing human conditions, depending on the (historical) time and (geographical) space which the artist is concerned to deal with. Teng has a highly synthetic approach to his practice, enabling him to strike the viewer with the immediacy of bare materials (such as fat, iron, dust, cotton, and wood) that convey complex meanings.

Instagram: @teng.zihan  Email: zhteng0818@gmail.com