News/Upcoming (last updated 17 Feb 2025)
- January: Contemporary Art Lecture Series at Ruskin College of Art, Oxford
- Currently: "The Tourist" at the 9th Asian Art Biennial
- Currently: writing a report on art & tech in China for British Council
- Upcoming: Exhibition with Madde Andersson at Zentrum für Kreativ Wirtschaft, Kassel
Some Projects
- Group Show: 小节线内的抽屉，Power Station of Art (2024)
- Solo: METAMERS, EPFL Pavilions (2024)
- Film: The Tourist, Art Gallery of York University
- Public Artwork: Ocean Briefings, Sea Art Festival, Busan (2023)
- Opera: Dead Cat Bounce, with Waste Paper Opera (2022), touring in 2024 to Eastside Projects, Nottingham Contemporary, and Arts Catalyst.
- Exhibition: Cycle 25, Arts Catalyst/Bloc Projects (2021).
Recent Writing
Recent Activity
- August: PAF University
- July: Dead Cat Bounce on tour to Nottingham Contemporary, book here!
- July: Senior Researcher @ Antikythera Cognitive Infrastructures Studio
- June 9: Talk for Weird Economies Summer School, with Bassam El Baroni and Steven Klein
- May 8: Online talk on "Interspecies Money" at Design Academy Eindhoven.
- April: Dead Cat Bounce on tour to Eastside Projects
- April: Publication launch: Future Art Ecosystems IV: Art & Public AI, read here.
- April: Publication launch: a text in "Interspecies Future: A Primer" published by Light Art Space.
- Opening: METAMERS at EPFL Pavilions until March 17th
- Feb 26: Artist talk at ICA London with Conditions programme
- Feb 24th: Catastrophe Time! Book launch at e-flux, NYC
- "Searching for the Revolutionary Ali Sultan Issa" for Frieze #243.
- Future Art Ecosystems 4: Art x Public AI, co-author (Serpentine, 2024)
- Profile on Max Planck ICARUS project for Interspecies, LAS.
- "Breaking up with globalization at the Taipei Biennial" for Art Basel
- "Shanghai Ecosystem Report" for Art Basel
- Into the Lumpy World", LEAP, Summer 2023 issue.
- Catalogue essay, Chando Ao (upcoming).
- "Unravelling the World in the Polycrisis Era" for Frieze #235.
- Future Art Ecosystems 3: Art x Decentralised Tech, co-author with Victoria Ivanova (Serpentine, 2022)
- "The Internet of Egregores" for Singapore Biennial, on the invitation of Aarti Sunder (upcoming)
- An introduction for Michael Ho's Jerwood FVU Commission, Echoes from the Void
- "Repressed Returns" in Incomputable Earth - Digital Technologies and the Anthropocene (Bloomsbury, upcoming)
- Trojan Horses" in ART PAPERS Spring 2022
- "Never the Same Ocean", Schloss Solitude "Mutations" Journal, in correspondence with Ittah Yoda.
- "Jenna Sutela: Sonic Metabolisms (interview)" in Sonic Continuum (Nottingham Contemporary, upcoming)
- "Anicka Yi: ‘I’m Very, Very Squeamish With Culture'" (interview) in ArtReview, October 2021
- "Propositions" Harun Farocki Institute & Journal for Visual Culture
- “Sinofuturism and its Uses”, VERGE Journal of Global Asias
- "Ponzi Scheme", Weird Economies
- "World on FIRE", Gaia Art Foundation
- 2022-23 R&D fellow @ Rockbund Art Museum
- October 6: Opening roundtable for ENTER THE HYPERSCIENTIFIC residency at EPFL in Switzerland. Come hear me, Rosa Menkman, Sarah Oppenheimer and curator Giulia Bini talk about upcoming projects in Lausanne.
- NEW WORK: Premiere of THE TOURIST with Art Gallery at York University in Toronto and online!
- Busan Sea Art Festival, opening Oct 15
- October 6: Opening of AlienVILLAGE with Sahjan Kooner at Eastside Projects, collaborations with myself, Sophie Chapman and Manjit Kooner
- Commission Launch: The Tourist @ AGYU Toronto
- Workshop: Rupert AEP, Vilnius
- September Book Launches: Rupert & CAC, Vilnius with Tautvydas Urbelis; After 8, Paris with Yuri Pattison & Benjamin Thorel; San Serriffe, Amsterdam with Metahaven & Merve Bedir
- Book Launch: Catastrophe Time! @ GOLDSMITHS JUNE 11
- July:
Tickets for Dead Cat Bounce at Somerset House for ONE NIGHT ONLY on July 14 are on sale now! Tickets are sold out!
- May: Presented an installation version of DCB at Medialab Matadero as part of OpenLAB.
- 06-21 April: I will be on a residency at Medialab Matadero, and preparing for a performance at Medialab's new festival, Open Lab. Lmk if you are in Madrid!
- April: We (me & Waste Paper Opera) have just wrapped up a first week of rehearsals for Dead Cat Bounce at London Performance Studios.
- March: Talk and project review with students of (Meteora) in the Hovestadt Chair at ETHZ
- Kings x Somerset House: Countermapping the Hostile Environment w/ Lu Canzutti (KCL/SecurityFlows) & Migrants Organise
- Teaching: Cybernetics and China with Mi You, The New Centre, session one here.
- 2022-23: lecturer @ Goldsmiths MFA, Fine Art, Critical Studies
- Group Exhibition: Katabasis, or Cartographer in the Underworld @ totalab Shanghai, curated by Julian Junyuan Feng, April 2023
- Talk: Art & Economy @ documenta Institute, May 2023
- Talk: The Greater Fool Theory @ chelsea college of art, May 2023
- Teaching: Casco Institute, COOP @ Dutch Art Institute
- Talk: Earth day in-conversation with Sougwen Chung and Asad Raza for Gaia Art Foundation and Ignota Press
- workshop @ Masters Institute of Visual Art
- Talk: Sync or Swim @ Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art & Curating
- Publication Launch: Future Art Ecosystems 3: Art x Decentralised Tech. FAE3 was co-authored by Gary Zhexi Zhang and Victoria Ivanova, and produced by Eva Jaeger and Serpentine R&D Platform. Launch event here.
- A contribution to Symposium: “Cohesion was meant to hold. But reality started to slide.” Diann Bauer — An Appreciation
- Group exhibition: Liquid Ground @ UCCA Dune
- Teaching: "Catastrophe Time!" workshop series at Goldsmiths MFA
- Screening: Dead Cat Bounce exhibited on As We Leave The Window Open as part of Liste Art Fair until October 13.
- Talk/Curation: Where is the Planetary @ HKW, "How Can Habitability Be Measured"?
- Talk: Presentation @ Oslo Architecture Trienniale as part of The Ledger of the Sun, organised by Jamie Allen
- Talk: Conversation with Jeffrey Shaw as part of Para Site's Art and Technology talk series
- Premiere: Dead Cat Bounce w/ Waste Paper Opera @ Somerset House
- Talk: Financial Worlding with Caroline Woolard as part of Strategies for Re-worlding at Trust, Berlin
- Talk: Industrial Food Textures and workshop w/ Agnes Cameron @ Schloss Solitude
- Teaching: Visiting Tutor and "Scam Magic" workshops at Goldsmith's MFA
- Podcast: "What is Financial Astrology?" with Alannah Chance @ Somerset House Studios
- Solo exhibition: Cycle 25 @ Arts Catalyst & Bloc Projects
- Digital Artwork: The First 10,000 Years w/ Agnes Cameron @ Arts Catalyst
- Group exhibition: The Principle of Hope @ Inside Out Art Museum
- Group exhibition: Liquid Ground @ Para Site
- Group Exhibition: Rehearsing the Future @ Alien Art Center
- Group Exhibition: Death Ray on Coral Island @ Power Station of Art
- Online screening: Parasite (物流) @ Douglas Hyde Gallery
- Talk: White Papers on Dissent @ Van Abbemuseum
- Group Exhibition: Further Experiments in Art & Technology @ NEW INC & Nokia Bell Labs (as Foreign Objects w/ Eliza Collin)
Collaborations/Connections
- Co-founder/fry cook of Foreign Objects
- Resident at Somerset House Studios with support from Kyrin Chen
- Distant but committed relationships w/ Waste Paper Opera, Trust, Sakiya, O.W.L., Weird Economies, Serpentine Arts Technologies, Other Internet, AICA
- Ex: Lecturer @ Goldsmiths MFA, PhD ext. examiner @ RCA, resident @NEW INC, p/t lecturer @ Parsons, Fellow @ Berggruen Institute, Delfina Foundation, Wysing, MIT ACT
Bio
- Gary Zhexi Zhang's work explores systemic connections between cosmology, technology and economy. He operates individually, in collaboration and within organisational frameworks. He recently edited a book of fictions, essays and interviews about finance and time, Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, 2023). Dead Cat Bounce, the opera he co-created with Waste Paper Opera, premiered at Somerset House in 2022 and tours in 2024. His most recent solo exhibition, METAMERS, was presented at EPFL Pavilions in February 2024.
He has worked as a Lecturer in Critical Studies at Goldsmiths MFA, a PhD external examiner at RCA, and Adjunct Lecturer at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he also co-founded design studio Foreign Objects. In 2023, he was an R&D fellow at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai and artist in residence at EPFL, Lausanne. His writing on art, technology and economy have appeared in Frieze, ArtReview, Verge Journal of Global Asias, Journal of Cultural Economy, MIT Journal of Design and Science, among others. Recent/upcoming books and chapters include Against Reduction (chapter, MIT Press, 2021), Incomputable Earth (chapter, Bloomsbury, upcoming), Platforms: Around, In Between and Through (Singapore Biennale, 2023); Future Art Ecosystems III & IV (co-author; Serpentine, 2022 & 2024).
Links