ART COLOGNE

Field Conditions. Vivien Zhang’s inaugural show with Galerie Max Hetzler, Goethestrasse, Berlin. Through 27 June.

Vivien Zhang grew up in China, Kenya and Thailand, lives in London, and paints from that particular kind of rootlessness — flowers she has only ever seen in photographs sent by her mother, butterflies whose transparent wings are built for camouflage, plants catalogued with the prefix pseudo, meaning false. The question running through every canvas: what is an original, and who decides?

The paintings are large, vibrant and structurally restless — oil and acrylic layered with loose brushstrokes, drip marks and thick impasto, the sequence of mark-making often reversed to disturb the natural read of foreground and background. In her words: how to create a rhythm, and how the eye travels when looking at the work.

One to see before June is out.

ART COLOGNE: 5-8 November 2026 | Koelnmesse - Köln Messe/Deutz