Lu Zhang: Pillow on Books, A Site-Specific Installation
2025/01/19- 2025/02/8
Artist: Lu ZhangPillow on Books - 枕上书, a site-specific installation with pillows and books, related to the artist’s latest publication, Lu Zhang ≈ HuaiErDeMan (Wildman) Clab (New York: Gong Press, 2024), will be presented at Accent Sisters.
Opening on January 19 at 4:58 pm, timed to sunset, this installation-based happening draws inspiration from Lu’s previous public engaged project Sleep Date: It Takes Hundreds of Years to Sleep on the Same Pillow, a traditional Chinese proverb which invokes yuánfèn, the belief that past lives create the possibility for encounters, friendships, and love.
In this special iteration, the artist reflects on the poetic interplay of resting, reading, and wording, weaving together the themes of her artist-book with the embodied act of being together. Transforming parts of the bookstore setting into a shared space for rest and reflection, this “Pillow on Books” invites viewers to slow down, read, and immerse themselves in a dreamy dialogue between books, texts, and presence.
* about the artist:
Lu Zhang was born in Xi’an, and arrived in New York in 2012. Founder of Wildman Clab ( HuaiErDeMan Clab), member of P_______Lub, and co-founder of Chinatown Basketball Club. Lu is an artist who writes visual essays through moving images, dream poems, and situated ceramics. She teaches pottery and plays basketball.
https://www.luzhang.org/
* about the publisher:
GONG PRESS is a publishing project based in New York and Beijing by Qianfan Gu, St. Jiu, and Yuki He. We produce art publications in collaboration with our artist friends. The project is named after the weapon “GONG (弓, bow)”: like a bow without an arrow, Gong Press exists in a state of quiet and dormant potency, ready to be activated through creative collaborations.
https://www.gongpress.art/
* about the publication:
Lu Zhang ≈ HuaiErDeMan (Wildman) Clab is an artist book that serves as both an archive and a reflection on Lu’s public-engaged projects from 2017 to 2023. Within its pages is a collection of materials that trace the evolution of her practice, including documentation of her situationist ceramics, research notes, ephemera, reading references, visual poems, and contributions from her father in the form of drawings and calligraphy. The book-making process itself bears witness to Lu’s journey of reconciliation, exploring how her personal and artistic identity finds a place within a practice that defies easy categorization.
The publication comes in two editions: a special limited edition of 15 copies, presented in a handcrafted ceramic box and accompanied by a matchstick to ignite a ceramic slab, revealing the artist’s manifesto poem; and a regular edition of 450 copies, each accompanied by a hand-made ceramic piece inscribed with a hand-written character by the artist. Both editions make the publication a literal art piece in itself. The book also features a commissioned essay and an interview with the artist by film studies scholar Xueli Wang, as well as a foreword by Herb Tam, offering deeper insights into the context and themes of her work.
