Framed Life Painting

Born 1994 China Lives and works in New York and Shanghai Zitong Zhu is a photographer and painter who interested in the deconstruction of space. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts and an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. Zitong’s recent work is a site-specific project —— ART· ifice 909. ART· ifice 909 is about optical illusion, humor, and tricking the perception of the viewer. This body of work is a site-specific project using the existing space and architectural elements in my studio to create two-and-a-half-dimensional photographs. Her goal is to encourage the viewer to discover alternative realities through the strategic use of illusion and perspective. These are realities that they can decide to accept, or not. Each work is created using a different logic including time, space, location, relocation, scale, reconstruction, and deconstruction. This body of work is her take on Trompe L’oeil, a traditional painting technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Zhu’s work has been featured in School of Visual Arts 20/20 Catalogs, curated by Hitomi Iwasaki, and has been exhibited at galleries and online including SVA Gramercy Gallery, cloyPARLOR Pop-up Show, Magic Plastic Lounge in Satellite Art Fair, ASYAAF (Asian Students and Young Artists Art Festival), and Pumpkin Club Online Gallery.