ANG ZIQI ZHANG (b. 1994, Brampton, Ontario. Lives and works in New York, USA)

‍Ang Ziqi Zhang is a painter and DJ based in Brooklyn. They received an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2023, and a dual BA in visual art and economics from the University of Chicago in 2016. Previous solo and group exhibitions have taken place at Derosia, New York (2023); Chapter NY, New York (2023); Perrotin, New York (2023); Iowa, New York (2023); Jan Kaps, Cologne (2023); LVL3, Chicago (2023); Good Weather, Chicago (2022); Night Club, Minneapolis (2022); Each Modern, Taipei (2022); and Produce Model, Chi- cago (2021). They are a founding member of the Brooklyn-based AAPI DJ collective AYI AYI.

“I work across different modes of painting, design, DJing, and event hosting to investigate intersections between affect, semiotics, and the conditions of late capitalism. In my paintings, visual play and gestural improvisation serve as metonym for navigating and making sense of the structures that prop up our worlds. I take seemingly neutral images and symbols such as signage, diagrams, and graphical representations as starting points for this painterly modula- tion and association. These modulations occur through varied modes of mark-making inclu- ding gesture, obfuscation, and the slow accumulation of thin washes of paint. Researching, scrambling, and resituating signs in my paintings is my way of questioning the images that determine our movements and feelings.

My practice extends beyond painting primarily through dance music and nightlife. Rave culture and history provide for me not only conceptual inspiration for my studio work, but sensorial engulfment and pleasure as well. Both painting and DJing operate as spaces of sensorial play and alterity for me; the two are always informing each other. These crossovers in sensibility are informed equally by my time in the studio and my time spent on dancefloors. The socialaspects of my music practice have also moved me to explore an ethos of collaboration and celebration in making. My collaborative printmaking and design work, often manifested as party flyers for both real and imagined events, conceptually complement my paintings and tether my visual and sound/time-based practices together.“

Ang Ziqi Zhang

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