Combining painting, drawing, printing and photography, Ran Zhang’s work builds up images through layering these techniques, and constantly reworking the layers.Through this process she is interested to shuffle and reverse the roles of content, form and technique, to create a ‘super image’ that functions as an interface, where the process is not finalized into form and the subject is not finalized into content. The image remains open and keeps questioning itself, rather than creating an illusion or narration. The intention is to highlight the relation between our drive to create images, which at the same time shape us.

Ran Zhang’s recent process is based on photographing arrangements of objects frame by frame with a microscopic camera, and subsequently digitally rendering those frames into single images. The result is the only way to see the assembly as a whole. This process emphasizes the act of making an image and thereby speaks about its necessity. The textures and details that arise from this process distort the larger whole, and thereby take away our ability to identify what is shown, forcing the objects to lose their meanings and remain only materials to construct an image.

In her practice, the constant observation of microscopic subjects turns the action of seeing into a content of its own, a behaviour, or a ritual. It develops into a sense of self awareness of the biochemical body that makes this process possible. Her new work stencils the visualization of reality beyond the visual threshold. It uses knowledge – the replacement of direct experience of the invisible – to synthesize an ‘emotional’ reaction in the formation of an image.