MIngzhang Sun Chinese, b. 1990

The series Half, comprised of 33 oil paintings, draws on traditions of Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting to explore the tension between the visible body and the interior realms of thought, emotion and desire. The works evoke the Mandarin sense of partial understanding — a recognition that something remains just out of reach. Blurring clarity and uncertainty, the works reflect the artist’s sense of an unseen self that resists full comprehension. They invite us to consider how well we know others, or even ourselves, and whether wholeness, bodily or emotional, is ever truly attainable.