Lychee One – Lian Zhang: Weathering with You

6 May - 18 June, 2022

Private View: 5 May: 4-8PM

Lychee One proudly presents Weathering with You, a solo exhibition of new work by London-based Chinese artist Lian Zhang. The exhibition is curated by Marcelle Joseph with the exhibition text below written by Gabriella Pounds. ‘Fucking you and being fucked by you are quite the same,’ opens Crossing Half of China to Fuck You, a poem by Yu Xiuhua. [1]In 2014, a Chinese literary magazine published the poem on the messaging app WeChat, attracting a million shares. Xiuhua’s verse floats in the undertow between beauty and violence. There are images of political prisoners, infra-red-eyed deer, rain composed of silver bullets, a virtual spring. Bodies being disgusting. After the poem went viral, Internet users condemned it as ‘slut poetry’. Xiuhua responded: ‘So what if I am a slut?’ Xiuhua’s punkish sensibility respawns throughout Lian Zhang’s paintings. In Reincarnation (2022), a severed nude lies in a steel blue lake. A butterfly rests its wings on her pink nipple. Above her, a planet mixes with an eyeball. If Xiuhua’s poems explore infinite desire, then Zhang’s paintings sync a lover’s iris with nebulae.