Mengxi Zhang 张梦溪

Mengxi Zhang (born 1989, Jilin, China) lives and works in London, UK.

My painterly practice explores the tension between structure and chaos, the strategic and the intuitive. I am drawn to the edge of imbalance, where immediacy takes precedence over the predetermined. The painting surface becomes an accumulation of thoughts and time, refusing to settle into a fixed state. Through bold brushstrokes and layered textures, physicality is privileged over image, emphasizing the act of painting as a visceral, bodily experience.

My work navigates the porous boundary between the inside and outside of the body, where internal sensations and external forces merge on the canvas. It seeks unfamiliarity, resisting certainty and the confines of language. The perspective is both microscopic and aerial, shifting between intimacy and vastness, where meanings leak, spill over, and contradictions coexist. The painting becomes a site of convergence—where the material and the immaterial, language and the body, containment and excess, continually negotiate their boundaries.

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Education

2021

Turps Studio Programme, London
2012

BA Fine Art, Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London

Solo Exhibitions

2025

Solo presentation Arte Fiera, Plain Gallery, Bologna
2023
Hide and Swallow, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing

Group Exhibitions

2025

Auto Amor Project, Auto Amor, Dunton Green

Paper Tower, Specific Objects Projects, London
2024

Interpretations of the Spirits, 2 Hoxton St, London
Self, Plain Gallery, Milan
A Vague Excuse, AMP Gallery, London
2023
Letters from Shenzhen, 1979 Gallery, Shenzhen
Annihilation, OHSH Projects, London
2022
Work in Process, Kupfer Project Space, London
Things I Like I Lick, Terrace Gallery, London
2021
Dreamlands Part 2, OHSH Projects, London
Dreamlands Part 1, OHSH Projects, London
Tabula Rasa Gallery, ArtShenzhen, Shenzhen
Turps Leavers Show, Thames Side Studios Gallery, London

Residencies

2023
Roman Road Summer Studio Programme, London
2022
Kupfer Project Space Residency, London