Hong Zhang Solo Art Show at Crossroads Hotel Gallery
May 20, 2023, 6-8 PM, Opening reception
Exhibit runs through July 29, 2023
Crossroads Hotel, 2101 Central
By Pete Dulin, NAAAP-KC
Artist Hong Zhang chose the non-traditional gallery space at Crossroads Hotel for a specific reason to display “Kansas In Black and White,” an exhibit of her four large hanging scrolls and a framed drawing of a tornado. The gallery is “more accessible than her public art works on view at the new KCI Airport, art museums, and galleries.”
Tiffany Thompson curated the show which was organized by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and El Dorado, a Kansas City and Portland, Oregon-based architectural, educational and curatorial company.
“This is my first time working with Tiffany at a non-traditional gallery space. It is more of an experimental and a site-specific project space,” says Zhang. “The hotel is open 24/7, so everyone can stop by and see the show for free during the exhibition period.”
Several NAAAP-KC members and guests met Zhang in person for an artist’s talk and viewed her work at a NAAAP-KC Mystery Adventure rendezvous at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Zhang’s work is also currently featured in “Found In Translation: Explorations by Eight Contemporary Artists” on exhibit through August 20, 2023, at the museum.
In her artist statement, Zhang writes, “For over twenty years, my art practice has evolved from personal identity to broader themes of gender, cross culture, environment, and more recently social justice. I combine traditional skills with contemporary ideas and draw from my own experiences in China as well as in the United States. Both in form and in process, my work is richly layered with fine details on a massive scale. My trademark works are large black and white charcoal drawings of long hair. I have used disembodied hair to explore my identity as a Chinese immigrant, woman, and mother.”
Since relocating from California to Lawrence, Kansas, in 2004, Zhang’s work has integrated her “long hair with Kansas environments such as the iconic tornados, prairie grass and flint-hills.”
For her solo show “Kansas in Black and White” at the Crossroads Hotel Gallery, Zhang chose only black-and-white artwork, including paintings in Chinese ink on Italian fabric or drawn in charcoal on paper.
“I continue incorporating long hair imagery with Kansas nature to depict the beautiful landscape in the region as well as being a Chinese Kansan,” Zhang explains. “The black and white colors not only reflect the visual dynamic of Yin and Yang, but also break a political and social stereotype of divisions in Kansas. My experience in Kansas is rich with a balance of traditional and modern midwestern culture as well as my own Chinese heritage. Moreover, the format of hanging scroll accentuates the length and the flow of long hair that makes sense within this space.”