Hive Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce “Zhang Ji: Gyulü”, opening on September 12, 2026, in the Main Gallery at Hive | Beijing Headquarters. This exhibition marks ZhangJi’s sixth solo exhibition, following “Zhang Ji: Kundalini”, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2020);”Zhang Ji: Bardo”, West Bund Art & Design, Beijing, China(2021); “Zhang Ji: Manas”, Long Museum, Shanghai,China (2023); and “Zhang Ji: Phowa”, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China (2024). The exhibition will present a selection of paintings on canvas created by Zhang Ji since 2025, revealing a new direction distinct from his previous works, alongside works on paper created from 2023 to the present-an ongoing practice that has long accompanied the artist’s daily life. Following “Zhang Ji: Phowa” (2024), this exhibition is once again curated by Yang Zi and will remain on view through November 4, 2026.

…The important thing is not the flesh.

…The “参” in ginseng is a borrowed character — it was originally written “葠” or “蓡”，meaning “to grow slowly, bit by bit.” Ginseng is a human-shaped thing that takes a long time to form. As an omen, it hints that form can nourish form, that ginseng grows slowly over time, feeding and stretching out a life. And it also hints at one body swallowing a body, one body storing a body, one body giving birth to a body — bodies nested inside bodies, or inside and outside nested in each other. Breathing in and out, opening and closing, metabolism. For whoever eats ginseng, it also brings up the image of being sliced open (Fontana, spatialism); bowls, jars, containers; poems with blank space left in them.

…(If) the body can only be a verb, can only be described as an action… what Zhang Ji does in front of the canvas… is like gymnastics. Spinning, leaping, a nimble show that disappears with the dismount, leaving only the arc of its path in the air. The judges savor it, chew it over, and score the arc. The flesh, a prop that once took part, gets tossed aside by the pommel horse or the springboard. It’s stuck there. It hasn’t had time to call its soul back yet.

…(Then) the body’s heaviness eases off for a while. So does the violence that this stuckness unavoidably stirs up when it runs up against the world outside the body.

…Traces from paintings also become paintings of traces.

(Excerpt from Zhang Ji: The Ginseng Eater. The full text will be published during the exhibition.)