Ziqi Cheng
Contexts
Why did I decide to draw in a sketchbook? & Reflections on curatorial thinking & About the way of thinking when creating
Why did I decide to draw in a sketchbook?
On January 26, 2023, I went on an offline gallery tour. The second exhibition I visited that day was Joseph Beuys - 40 Years of Drawing, which featured approximately 100 works on paper by Joseph spanning 40 years of his art production. While seeing the show, one could notice the variations in his artistic practise organised by year. During my visit, I was especially captivated by his paintings from the 1940s and 1950s, a time when he focused on animals, natural landscapes and feminine characters. These works were mostly pencil drawings, collages, and watercolours, and some were as simple as one page of a notebook or a piece of sketch paper, but they were all the outcome of his thoughts. A small sheet of paper can sometimes be the carrier of a drawing as well as the value of my thoughts. So, at the start of Unit 2, I began using a notebook to record ideas, doodles, and experiments with different strokes and materials, and I aim to continue this habit and incorporate it into my future work.
Exhibition: Joseph Beuys - 40 Years of Drawings, Photographed in 2023
Reflections on curatorial thinking
I've never given much thought to how to exhibit my work in a way that provides visitors with a unique visual experience. Lucian Freud: New Perspective and Thin Air, two exhibitions I visited in 2022 and 2023, have both influenced me in terms of time and space.
The exhibition on Lucian Freud: New Perspective used a timeline of his work from one period to the next, in a way that clearly showed the changes in his work at different stages and the influence of his surroundings. I particularly liked Freud's early self-portraits, where I could see a sense of unadorned purity of painting when the gallery was lit as brightly as usual, until I moved on to the next section, which was dimly lit but still time-guided, showing us the sequence of viewing. The works in this dimly lit room are all portraits of Freud's mother when she was bedridden during her lifetime, and I am amazed at the ingenuity of the curator in using the changes in lighting to move a group of visitors through the dimly lit room to experience Freud's mood at the time.
Exhibition: Lucian Freud: New Perspective, Photographed in 2022
In the Thin Air exhibition, the artist used modern technology to create a large-scale installation that made me realise that the venue, the sound, the light, and the visitors could be integrated. When I was in the large venue, the light shone on the visitors in response to the sound, and all the visitors' silhouettes and movements under the light were like a large performance art show. The clever use of space and lighting effects made the visitors become part of the artwork without realising it. It was also the first exhibition where I felt immersive and very involved.
Exhibition: Thin Air, Photographed in 2023
About the way of thinking when creating
Each of my creative shifts has been inextricably related to the numerous workshops I've attended, which have frequently provided me with opportunities to encounter new material, learn new forms of work, and develop new ideas. The Collage Workshop and the Digital to Material Workshop were the most influential on my creative style and thinking during Unit 2. When I participated in the Collage Workshop, it was the first time I had tried collage, and it was a wonderful process, combining completely different objects together to produce a new object, as well as producing many unexpected effects and breaking out of fixed thinking, which was a method to find new inspiration.
The Digital to Material Workshop was also very interesting because I used the same creative approach as with the collage and solved a problem that I had been hoping to solve for a long time: how to print large-format drawings at a low cost. I had been planning to make large drawings but was struggling with how to present them. Through the workshop, I learned that using a relevant website to cut up the image, print the cut parts to A3 or A4 size, and put them together solved this problem. This helped me with the next stage of my creative thinking, and I became interested in 3D scanning. Secondary creation of scanned 3D models sometimes produces many unexpected effects, opening up my creative imagination and allowing me to discover new sources of inspiration.
Works in those two workshop, 2023