NAILS — Yusi Zang
Pieces from My House Series
There is a special banality to this piece — it expresses a tension between a nihilistic energy -
What you see is what you get
-And an elusive potential that the work is presenting more than what meets the eye.
True to colour, light, and the centred composition the work — there is no misplacing it’s subject matter — two solitary nails petruding from a plasterboard wall.
Charmingly monochromatic, the painting is honest and natural.
Zang Places focussed attention on nails, which are often overlooked, but equally draws attention and curiosity to an object which should be present — a painting.
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This painting feels self-reflexive, speaking to medium of painting without becoming overtly meta. Representing the modes of presentation as a painting feels like a beautifully crafted cycle.
An inception of painting and hanging methods.
An ouroboros.
A snake eating itself.
Endlessly.
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As the painting hangs on a nail itself — the painting reflects its own reality — relating back to its own infrastructure whilst alluding to an non-existent work in the imagination of the painting.
The quiet painter in the studio, colouring a canvas the mute colour of the wall possibly behind this painting itself.
The beginning of the cycle.
The painting’s depth exceeds its surface banality, spreading into a rich work that speaks to an internal space and light on two single points on a wall.
With a sense of humour, Zang’s mark next to the right nail presents a moment of mistake and correction. With the opportunity to create “the perfect painting” Zang chooses to represent the imperfect imaginary — as is the way with our reality.
This point of the painting directly reflects the imagined artist’s hand.
The imagined artist correcting their mistake in moving the nail over a centimetre, capturing the imperfection of the intended unseen once the imagined painting is hung on the nails.
The painting has captured a moment in freeze.
The moment of the imagined artist retrieving their work to hang over the two solitary nails.
The initial banality of the work is overcome by the dichotomy of detail and urgency in capturing the moment between moments yet so laboriously crafted.
The painting opens an entire world of creativity, presentation, and potential — all through the detailed representation of two lonely nails against a monochromatic background — which both presents its own realities of the viewer’s world but also is caught in a moment of potential and transformation within the imagined universe of the painting.
