Artist uses snow to depict urban plight

Zhang Meng, Tianjin-based artist.

A graduate in lithography from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, he shifted to 3-D videos in the late 1990s, and now heads his alma mater's video art department. He does experimental ink art, too.

Exhibition curator Lu Yinghua says that Zhang's works communicate a head-on examination of people. The approach shared by many artists of his generation responds to the rising culture of consumerism in China since the early 1990s, accompanied by voids in their personal lives.

This is quite different from artists from the late 1970s and '80s who often created "high-handed and macroscopic perspectives", says Lu.

It took Zhang a year to complete his latest video on show, Fierce Tigers with Golden Chains. The work shows two chained tigers running far from a forest toward the audience amid snowfall.

The animals reveal a crisis that affects everyone living in this world, Zhang says.

"Although I love the snow, I feel that it sometimes glosses over our circumstances, leaving us unprepared for approaching troubles."

He also displays three works based on Green Bean Heaven, an unfinished collection of essays he has been writing for a decade recalling his childhood.

In the videos, he tries to bring back memories and pieces them together to create fantasy scenarios.

If you go

10 am-6 pm, through Oct 10. Today Art Museum, 32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5876-0600.