Jichi Zhang 张继弛 (b. 2001, Hohhot, China) is a London-based artist working across sculpture, installation, and material-led research. His site-responsive practice begins with materials designed to protect buildings and objects during construction, transport, storage, and repair: transparent film, adhesive tape, architectural coverings, and provisional supports. Through restrained acts of folding, leaning, suspending, adhering, tensioning, and relocating, he places these materials at unstable thresholds between wall, floor, object, and air.
Zhang is interested less in fragility as an appearance than in the systems that produce, manage, and redistribute it. Protection does not eliminate exposure; it redirects it. One surface is kept intact because another absorbs pressure, dust, deformation, or wear. Gravity, airflow, adhesion, and material fatigue act on each installation, making visible the dependencies between material, architecture, display, and the labour required to keep an arrangement in place. The works therefore operate not as fixed objects but as provisional conditions whose form remains contingent on their support.
Maintenance belongs to the work’s form. Reinstallation does not restore an original state but begins a new negotiation with a site: components shift, surfaces retain traces, and the conditions of care change. Zhang’s current research extends these material tests through installation instructions, condition reports, and rules of repair or replacement. These texts do not simply interpret the sculpture; they allocate permission, record decisions, and determine which changes count as damage. Ownership appears less as possession than as the authority to decide when intervention becomes necessary, what must be preserved, and what may be allowed to fail or disappear. Across the work, support is never neutral, and protection is never complete; the artwork is what remains unresolved while being maintained.
Zhang is currently completing an MA Fine Art in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. He received his BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins with First-Class Honours in 2025, studied at Universität der Künste Berlin under Prof. Schutter, receiving a grade of 1.0, and completed Level 7 study at St George’s, University of London, with Distinction.
Recent solo exhibitions include Support Room (2026) and am (2025) at Absent Gallery, Guangzhou; by (2026) at L Gallery, Hangzhou; and if (2025) at Gallery 456, Chinese American Arts Council, New York. His work has also been presented at Saatchi Gallery, the National Gallery, Three Zeros Contemporary Art Centre, and the Handbag Factory.
Alongside, he reads and rides.
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