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At Palazzo Merulana, Rome opens its doors to the East with the solo exhibition of Chinese Master Zhang Xiaotao. Blending figurative painting, digital animation, and layered symbolism, 18 works trace the emotional and social spectrum of contemporary life, offering a vision of reality that is both poetic and unsettling. Decaying strawberries, blood-stained sheets, timeworn saints, insect colonies, and post-industrial cities become protagonists in an imaginary suspended between allegory and documentary.
A participant in the 2013 Venice Biennale, Zhang explores time as resonance and memory as visual sediment. His images - rich in autobiographical, spiritual, and political references - emerge as painted simulacra that question the viewer. Archaeology, sociology, and Buddhist philosophy fuel a powerful and intimate language in which every subject becomes a pretext for reflection on transformation, community, and impermanence. As curator Andrea Romoli Barberini notes, space, time, and society form the coordinates of this “total” exhibition, unfolding as a fragmented yet coherent narrative. Zhang’s aesthetic - at once gentle and fierce - affirms his role as a critical observer of a transforming China and a fragile, complex humanity.