Born in Shanghai, 1985, Zhang Ruyi still lives and works there. She obtained her BA in Printmaking and MFA in Synthesized Materials, both from the Fine Arts College of Shanghai University, in 2007 and 2012 respectively. ZHANG’s artistic practice unfolds around everyday logic. Her work occupies a unique space which reconciles artefact, the industrial experience, and urban life. The artist finds inspiration in everyday materials. In her main narrative approach, she begins with inner intuition and explores the hierarchical interactions between individuals, material, and place. Her work mainly involves installation, sculpture, and integrated media. She uses “reality” as a “model” for drawing out moments of individual perception as the city shifts around its inhabitants, and through the visual language of paradoxical transformation, plants it within the material to bestow a spiritual significance which extends beyond the material.

ZHANG’s recent solo exhibitions include: “Once Remain, Once Remould” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2023); “ZHANG Ruyi: Speaking Softly” (UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2022); “Modern Fossil” (SSSSTAR, Shanghai, 2022); “Consciousness of Location” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2019); “Bonsai” (François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019); “Building Opposite Building” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2016), etc. Her work has been shown at the 16th Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale “Manifesto of Fragility” (Lyon, 2022), “ON | OFF 2021: Carousel of Progress” (He Art Museum, Foshan, 2022), “Breaching Sanctum” (Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2022), “Death-Ray on the Coral Island: Archeology of Science Fiction” (Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2021), “More More More” (TANK Shanghai, Shanghai, 2021), “Resistance of the Sleepers” (UCCA Dune, Qinhuangdao, 2020), “Glow Like That” (K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, 2019), “Walking On the Fade Out Lines ” (Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2018) and other institutions.