Zhong Wei: Stress Response

Press preview: Wednesday 24 November, 11 am - 1 pm.

Jack Bell Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by contemporary artist Zhong Wei. His loud and chaotic visual language references the overwhelming omnipresence of the Internet. Sourcing imagery from a vast range of memes, images, and videos found online, Wei deconstructs the textures of digital culture and reanimates the fragments into imagined landscapes, figures, and entities. This will be his first exhibition in the UK.

This new series of works on canvas explores the normalization of anxiety and restlessness in the contemporary post-Internet era. The raging artworks depict abstract forms of mechanical structures and deformed figures. Juxtaposing organic forms alongside silhouettes and voids, the depicted environments, while metaphysical, appear precarious and unstable. Each artwork is filled with intensity – a reflection of the psychological strain consequential to overindulgence in technology. As technology and the Internet grows to consume every aspect of life, Zhong Wei elucidates the underlying dangers of this supposed aid, and questions its complex implication in the development of society and civilization.

Wei was born in 1987 in Beijing, China, where he continues to live and work. His work has been acquired by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nasantara (MACAN), Indonesia.