Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist and researcher interested in feedback between social, technological and biological systems.
My work explores technological systems and ecologies of media. ‘The Kernel Process’ (2017) examines the material and metaphorical interfaces of the body — the black boxes we thought we knew. Imagining an excision of the sensory faculties, the narration dreams of subterranean architecture; skins and surfaces; lizards, latex and Georges Bataille’s infamous description of lingchi torture.
Emerging from research into biological networks, my current project is entitled “once the workers have been enslaved, a state of erotic communism will be declared, globally”. The work is a speculative fiction concerned with distributed erotic networks, formed by a ‘loving symbiosis’ between humans and fungi.
Recent exhibitions include ‘All Channels Open’ at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge. In 2017, Gary Zhexi Zhang will be in residence at SPACE Art + Technology, London; Baltic Mill, Newcastle; and CCA, Glasgow.
The Kernel Process
HD Video / 09:45 min / 2017
‘The Kernel Process’ (2017) examines the material and metaphorical sensorium of the body. Imagining an excision of the sensory faculties, the narration dreams of subterranean architectures; skins and surfaces; lizards, latex and Bataille’s infamous account of lingchi torture.
lacoste1
HD Video / 08:34 min / 2015
lacoste1’s title refers to a knockoff designer store which used to be open near my grandmother’s house in Suzhou, my hometown. Like the outlets around it, the store has since been demolished and replaced by malls lled with luxury brands, including a large (authentic) Lacoste store. The video takes this anecdote as a point of departure to explore the notion of authenticity within the hybrid cultures of globalisation.