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Yibei Zhang

Yibei Zhang (b.1992, born in Heilongjiang, China) lives and works in Beijing. Graduated from Royal College of Art MA Fine Art (Sculpture) 2017 and University of Arts London, Wimbledon College of Arts - BA Fine Art (Sculpture) 2015. Yibei has won 2019 Tomorrow Sculpture Awards and has showed in instituions like Yinchuan contemporary art museum, Today Art Museum and Goethe-Institut.

Yibei Zhang starts with a proposition, that is, a rethinking of the relationship between artist, material and ideation. In this rethinking, the artist and her materials form the entity world and the entity world frames the ideation world; ideation and material together compose the imagery of the artist and this imagery leads, chicken and egg-like, to the collaboration of artist and material. Material, artist and ideation are therefore fated to co-exist. What then is material and who is the artist? Where is ideation? We might deem that the artist picks her material, be it stone, silicon or things that exist in the world (found or sought objects), because she combines her materials as reference objects to her subconscious. This poses for Yibei the question of whether the material belongs to the artist or vice versa, i.e. relative to material, the artist is moved and relative to the artist, the material is moved.