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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, © Zhang Peili
Zhang Peili 張培力
Brown Book No. 1 褐皮書一號
1988
This installation consists of text, photographs, and objects. Nine framed black-and-white photographs document the artist preparing letters and packages of surgical gloves with fellow artist Yang Zhengzhong, and the last photograph shows him dropping a package into a mailbox. Two frames contain letters, and a display case presents a pair of surgical gloves with their paper packaging. Zhang Peili produced this work when he was recuperating from an illness at home, and he decided to use the mailing system as an art medium. Using a registrar’s list of students at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, he sent packages to randomly selected recipients. They were told to paint the gloves following instructions, which included cryptic statements, such as never asking the sender any questions. The work follows from Zhang’s realistic depictions of gloves in a series of oil paintings created in 1986 and 1987 that emphasise sterility and distance. His conceptual approach in this work shifts the focus from the final visual work to the structure and conditions of art production. The work also draws attention to the imposition of standards on society, a subject Zhang explored in several text-based works in the late 1980s.
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