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Professor Xi Zhang’s ‘Exit: Childtown’ at GOCA, Colorado Springs


The Ghost Town Xi Zhang

Painting & Drawing Assistant Professor Xi Zhang opens a new exhibition, EXIT: Childtown, at the Galleries of Contemporary Art in Colorado Springs, CO, next week. The show, curated by Ivar Zeile, runs April 6 - July 1, 2023, with Zhang's artist talk taking place opening night.

A major shift in Xi Zhang’s career began nearly a decade ago when Zhang established his expansive Metallic Leaf Garden series. A dramatic change in his environment emboldened Zhang towards this vigorous new exploration, one he has pushed forward unceasingly ever since.

EXIT: Childtown affords an opportunity to take stock of the enormous evolution in Zhang’s work through the single largest collection of paintings from within the Metallic Leaf Garden series delivered to the public to date. Across the series, Zhang builds a nonlinear narrative centered in allegory, forging a direction he had long sought to realize through his rich imagination. Zhang maintains his fearless, experimental tendencies, grounded by deep thought, that draw the viewer's attention. Zhang’s broad context and vivid imagination present reality in its most dreamlike form through a richness of color and composition that varies widely across the entire expanse of his “garden.” It is no surprise that he has dedicated his wide-ranging, attentive spirit to its ongoing cultivation and care.

Pictured: The Ghost Town, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 in., 2020