Ping Zheng: Light Hour

Kristen Lorello is thrilled to present ‘Light Hour,’ Ping Zheng’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery.  New paintings on paper in the artist’s signature medium of oil stick on paper mark an exciting moment in the Chinese-born, New York-based artist’s technical and stylistic development.  In her new works that blend naturalism, landscape, and pattern, Zheng delves further into the exploration of landscape as an intensely personal, spiritual space.  Please join us in celebration of the artist at the opening reception on Saturday, November 7th from 6-8pm.

Ping Zheng’s visions of swirling rivers, reflected pools, and mountains opening to luminous orbs capture, meditate, and transport the viewer.  She translates her own free, joyful and tranquil experiences of nature into spiritual propositions that all are invited to share.  Having lived in various continents and participated in a variety of artist residencies in China, Europe, and the United Sates, Zheng embraces travel as an important element of self-education, alongside her continuous study of artworks in books and exhibitions, philosophical texts, and poems.  The paintings in ‘Light Hour’ were made in Queens, New York, following visits to Central Park, city walks, and experiences of nature in mind.  The symbol of the paper plane appears as a new element in her work, conjuring thoughts of play, travel, imagination, hand, and paper.

For Zheng, the conceptual focus in this new series is time, depicted as changing seasons and shifts between day and night.  With Salvador Dalì’s renowned 1931 painting, ‘The Persistence of Memory,’ in her mind’s eye, Zheng’s trees, rivers, and flowers stretch and wave, becoming the characters of an animated space.  In depictions of winter, snow ripples as though reflected in water, while suns and moons stretch and double.  These shifting forms suggest a world in which familiar natural elements are no longer fixed, but continually transformed by time and perception. To accentuate this dazzling sense of movement, Zheng uses a brush for the first time since graduate school, a tool that enhances the darting and swirling aspect of her scenes.

Ping Zheng was born in Zhejiang, China in 1989 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  She received a BFA from Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, in 2014 and an MFA in 2016 from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.  Her works are included in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Cleveland Clinic Art Program, and Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Soft Interference,’ Seven Sisters, Houston, Texas, 2026, ‘Whispers of Light and Trees,’ Kristen Lorello, 2025, and ’Where Memories of Travels Go,' the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 2023.  Group exhibitions include 'Space City: Art in the Age of Artemis,' at the Asia Society Texas, Houston, TX, ‘Ethereal,’ Edji Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, ’Katy Schimert + Ping Zheng,' Geary, Millerton, NY, and 'Bellyache,' Chart, New York, NY.  Her exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, The Houston Chronicle, and The New Yorker, among other publications.