Mengmeng Zhang: Delayed Intimacy
Writer: Ben XIA Tian
Date: 28/03/2026
Keywords: delayed intimacy / affective dislocation / material flow
Mengmeng Zhang’s paintings give form to emotion. The faint narrative traces in her images do not depend on direct representation; rather, they emerge through the staining, seepage and layering of water-based paint. What the viewer confronts is not a clearly defined scene, but a psychological climate in the making. So far, Zhang’s work has offered a mode of viewing that is not fully synchronous. It comes close to style, but is better understood as a working method: images seem to surface from the memory of the previous few seconds, only to be immediately veiled, like moisture, by the psychic noise of the present.
《蜕皮》，布面丙烯、水粉及色粉，280 x 230 cm，2025，摄影：王文轩
Moulting，Acrylic, gouache and pastel on canvas，280 x 230 cm，2025，Photography：Wenxuan Wang
在《蜕皮》（2025）中，画面中央的准人形象被压入蓝绿的深处，就像是在潮湿空气里被反复擦拭过的影像痕迹。人物轮廓柔和，流淌和涂抹的方法制造了延宕。在这里，“蜕皮”并非戏剧性的重生，而更像缓慢的脱落，如同尚未淡去的旧情。画面并不提供完整线索，保留下来的只有一些正在生成的感受性边界，在视觉中延迟情感中的亲密性。
In Moulting (2025), a quasi-human figure at the centre of the canvas is pressed into a blue-green depth, like the trace of an image repeatedly wiped in damp air. The figure’s contours remain soft, while the methods of flow and smearing produce a sense of delay. Here, “moulting” is not a dramatic rebirth so much as a slow shedding, like an old feeling that has not yet faded. The painting does not provide complete clues. What remains are only a few emerging perceptual boundaries, delaying intimacy within vision itself.
《接吻》，布面丙烯、墨水，90 x 120 cm, 2025，摄影：王文轩
Kiss，Acrylic and ink on canvas，90 x 120 cm, 2025，Photography：Wenxuan Wang
Kiss，Acrylic and ink on canvas，90 x 120 cm, 2025，Photography：Wenxuan Wang
同一时期的作品《接吻》（2025）也不提供清晰的面孔，而是让“接触”的形态在色层中自行浮现：上部深酒红与紫灰压出厚重的暗弧，像贴近观看时留下的阴影；中间部分的拖拽令鼻尖与唇部的轮廓若隐若现，仿佛两张侧脸在同一块湿润空气里呼吸。墨水与丙烯在此不只是材料差异，而是满足了亲密的工序：前者像情绪的回渗与不可控的渗入，后者则试图维持理性的边界。这幅“接吻”的动人部分不完全在于其甜蜜感，而是在不稳定性：亲密并未将主体彻底合并，反而暴露出边界接触时的分离。
A work from the same period, Kiss (2025), likewise withholds a clear face, allowing the form of “contact” to emerge on its own through layers of colour. In the upper part of the canvas, deep burgundy and purplish grey press into a heavy dark arc, like a shadow left by close looking; in the middle, dragged strokes make the contours of nose and lips appear and disappear, as if two profiles were breathing in the same humid air. Ink and acrylic are not merely different materials here; they enact the very procedure of intimacy. The former resembles the backflow of emotion and an uncontrollable seepage, while the latter attempts to maintain a rational boundary. What moves us in this “kiss” is not simply its sweetness, but its instability: intimacy does not fully merge the subjects, but instead exposes separation at the moment when boundaries come into contact.
《摇摇欲坠》，布面丙烯、色粉，140 x 200 cm, 2024
On the brink，Acrylic and pastel on canvas，140 x 200 cm, 2024
On the brink，Acrylic and pastel on canvas，140 x 200 cm, 2024
张萌萌绘画中的延宕感在另一件作品《摇摇欲坠》（2025）中更为明显。从方法上来说，画面中的深酒红色是同一颜色在不同稀释程度下的流淌结果：艺术家先用喷壶将画布浸透，再将稀释后的颜料从画面顶部放下，并操纵材料在画布上流淌，随后，艺术家会在半干时迅速确立形体。这种方法使“流动”不再只是视觉效果，并抬出了身体的时间性维度。画面中摇摇欲坠的姿态——人物挂在由几笔构成的吊灯结构之上——构成一种两面性，暗示着在静止中坠落的风险。这也是亲密的风险。它不仅意味着亲近，也意味着个体离开本来位置趋近他人。
This sense of delay becomes even more pronounced in another work, On the Brink (2025). Technically speaking, the deep burgundy in the painting results from the same colour flowing at different levels of dilution. The artist first soaks the canvas with a spray bottle, then releases diluted paint from the top edge and manipulates the material as it runs across the surface; after that, she quickly establishes the form while the canvas is still half-dry. In this process, “flow” ceases to be merely a visual effect and brings forth a bodily temporal dimension. The precarious pose in the image—a figure suspended from a chandelier-like structure sketched in just a few strokes—produces a double valence, suggesting the risk of falling within stillness itself. This, too, is the risk of intimacy. It signifies not only closeness, but also the movement by which one leaves one’s original position in order to approach another.
《燃烧的心》，布面丙烯、墨水、色粉，150 x 100 cm, 2026，图片提供：Twilight Contemporary 画廊
Burning Heart，Acrylic, ink and pastel on canvas，150 x 100 cm, 2026，Image courtesy of Twilight Contemporary Gallery
在另外两幅与“火”有关的作品《燃烧的心》（2025）和《恍如昨日》（2025）中，艺术家则从封存而压抑的热情切入她所关注的亲密主题：在《燃烧的心》的画面底部，蜷缩如骷髅般的人形手部抓住了另一个人的腿，试图阻止对方离开。在更小尺幅里，《恍如昨日》把这种依恋压缩进了一个极小的动作：点烟。作品源自一个日常姿势，用燃烧的烟嘴去点燃另一根嘴里的烟。橘红的热度从上部压下，被下方边缘的蓝紫冷雾抵住；影像残留并非行动的完成，而像同一件事被回放、误触或撤销。细小的红色在“字面”上是点燃的烟嘴，但这个火源也像伤口。它让“恍如昨日”不再只是一个整体氛围，而是一种无法忽略的局部炙热。作品里那种略带卡通感、硬朗转角的侧脸造型与她童年临摹漫画的经验有关。这些侧脸形象反复出现在张萌萌的作品当中，我们似乎可以辨认出一些个人记号。总体而言，艺术家的主要工作是将绘画当作情感校准的方式——用稀薄、流动、半透明的色层处理异质经验所带来的错位，它关乎于内在情感与外部环境的能量交换。
In two other works related to the “fire”, Burning Heart (2025) and Feels Like Yesterday (2025), the artist approaches her theme of intimacy through a passion that is sealed over and suppressed. At the bottom of Burning Heart, a curled, skeletal human hand grips another person’s leg, as if trying to stop them from leaving. In the smaller-scale Feels Like Yesterday, this attachment is compressed into a minute gesture: lighting a cigarette. The work is based on an everyday action, in which the burning tip of one cigarette lights another held in someone else’s mouth. Orange-red heat presses down from above, held back by a blue-violet cool mist along the lower edge. What lingers in the image is not the completion of an action, but something like the replay, accidental triggering, or cancellation of the same event. On the literal level, the tiny red mark is the lit end of a cigarette, yet this source of flame also resembles a wound. It turns Feels Like Yesterday from an overall atmosphere into a localised heat that cannot be ignored. The slightly cartoon-like side profile, with its hard angular turns, is related to the artist’s childhood experience of copying manga. These side-facing figures recur throughout Zhang’s paintings, and we can perhaps begin to recognise them as personal markers. More broadly, the artist’s primary task is to treat painting as a means of calibrating emotion—to use thin, fluid, semi-transparent layers of colour to work through the dislocations produced by heterogeneous experience. What is at stake is an exchange of energy between inner feeling and the external environment.
《恍如昨日》，布面丙烯，50 x 40 cm, 2025，图片提供：Twilight Contemporary 画廊
Feels like yesterday，Acrylic on canvas，50 x 40 cm, 2025，Image courtesy of Twilight Contemporary Gallery
Feels like yesterday，Acrylic on canvas，50 x 40 cm, 2025，Image courtesy of Twilight Contemporary Gallery
回到《恍如昨日》当中，人物与色彩的处理使得“昨日”不仅仅是时间与记忆，也是一种风格伦理：重点并非具象或抽象，而是形体如何在流动中转换成情绪。在这件作品中，颜色之间的温差与模糊的边缘并非装饰，借用女性主义理论家莎拉·艾哈迈德（Sara Ahmed）的术语，它们是以“情感做事（emotion do things）”。换言之，张萌萌的绘画并非是给出关于“何为亲密”的结论，而是在探索“如何亲密”的伦理。
Returning to Feels Like Yesterday, the treatment of figure and colour makes “yesterday” more than time or memory; it becomes a kind of stylistic ethic. The crucial point is not whether the work is figurative or abstract, but how form is transformed into emotion through flow. In this work, the differences in temperature between colours and the blurred edges are not decorative. To borrow feminist theorist Sara Ahmed’s formulation, they are places where “emotions do things.” In other words, Zhang’s paintings do not offer a conclusion about what intimacy is; they explore the ethics of how to be intimate.
《嘀-嗒-嘀》，布面丙烯、墨水，140 x 200 cm, 2025，摄影：王文轩
di-da-di，Acrylic and ink on canvas，140 x 200 cm, 2025， Photography：Wenxuan Wang
di-da-di，Acrylic and ink on canvas，140 x 200 cm, 2025， Photography：Wenxuan Wang
我认为，张萌萌的绘画在探索的是一种经验的运行条件。当然，她的身份与经历也伴随其中。画面感受不以清晰的事件形式出现，而是以卡顿、回声、半完成的方式。《嘀-嗒-嘀》（2025）是艺术家在英国生活工作期间的思乡之作。在《嘀-嗒-嘀》里，“时空”从故事中剥离出来，转为结构：灰紫色雾层里可辨的网格、弧线与不稳定暗部，像界面里尚未加载完成的窗口。它不提供叙事，只提供节奏；不交代说明，而强调延迟。这些灰压压的楼房，低饱和度的颜色，一种阴雨天的氛围将伦敦与艺术家的故乡连云港连接到了一起。画面左上部分的“车轮”作为记忆的母题，在反复刷涂的过程中渐渐隐去，只留下主体的圆形与时钟的意象呼应。画面与标题中的“嘀嗒”一道构成了一种断续的提示音：艺术家对于自身处境与身份的认知在情感延宕中不断刷新。更准确地说，画面的主角是被雾气锁住的时空，它也是一种外来者的情绪，在场但无法被轻易描述。
I would argue that what Zhang’s paintings explore is the operating condition of experience itself. Her identity and lived experience are, of course, part of this. Sensation does not appear in the form of clearly defined events, but rather as stutter, echo, and incompletion. Di-Da-Di (2025) is a homesick work made while the artist was living and working in the UK. In this painting, time-space is stripped away from the story and turned into structure: discernible grids, arcs, and unstable dark zones emerge within a grey-purple mist, like windows in an interface that have not yet fully loaded. The work offers no narrative, only rhythm; it provides no explanation, only delay. The rows of grey, oppressive buildings, the low-saturation palette, and the atmosphere of a rainy day connect London with the artist’s hometown, Lianyungang. The “wheel” in the upper left functions as a mnemonic motif; through repeated brushing, it gradually recedes, leaving only a circular form that echoes the image of a clock. Together with the “di-da-di” of the title, the painting forms an intermittent signal: the artist’s awareness of her own situation and identity is continuously refreshed through emotional delay. More precisely, the protagonist of the image is a time-space locked in mist. It is also the emotion of an outsider—present, yet not easily described.
《在我离开之前 II》，树脂，墨水，宣纸，
大约 25 x 30cm，2025，Small-Time Project，伦敦
Long before I depart II，Ink on Chinese rice paper，
Approx. 25 x 30cm，2025，Small-Time Project，London
大约 25 x 30cm，2025，Small-Time Project，伦敦
Long before I depart II，Ink on Chinese rice paper，
Approx. 25 x 30cm，2025，Small-Time Project，London
张萌萌擅长从“薄”的角度工作，但这种“薄”不等同于“轻”。相反，这种“薄”是克制。它以最小的图像确定性换取最大的情绪可塑性。她的绘画更接近一种低声的蒙太奇。碎片彼此不加解释，却在色层的相互沾染中完成匹配。画面不算很难辨认，但观众会在快要得到具体意象时被唤回到纯粹的感受里。画面时刻在提醒，真正可靠的不是言语解释或翻译，而是感知的触动。观众有理由期待在张萌萌的作品中出现更多结构性的不安，让这种错位和延迟从亲密的伦理走向更为复杂的命题。譬如，在画面的关键处更为坚决地给出阻力、断裂或不可回撤的痕迹。一旦她将这份阻力稳定下来，那么，她的绘画便能提出更多的问题。譬如，主体将付出何种代价才得以接近“亲密”本身。
Zhang is particularly adept at working from a position of “thinness”, though this thinness is not the same as lightness. On the contrary, it is a form of restraint. It exchanges minimal image-certainty for maximum emotional plasticity. Her paintings come closer to a low-voiced montage. The fragments do not explain one another, yet they find their correspondence through the mutual staining of colour layers. The images are not especially difficult to recognise, but just when the viewer is about to arrive at a concrete image, one is drawn back into pure sensation. The paintings consistently remind us that what is truly reliable is not verbal explanation or translation, but the touch of perception. There is reason to expect more structural unease to emerge in Zhang’s work, allowing this dislocation and delay to move from the ethics of intimacy toward more complex propositions. One might imagine, for instance, a more decisive introduction of resistance, rupture, or irretrievable marks at key points in the image. Once such resistance is stabilised, her painting could raise further questions. For example: what price must the subject pay in order to approach intimacy itself?
《5：55》，木板丙烯、水粉及宣纸，30.5 x 25.2 cm, 2025
Real Artist Sweat，展览现场 Tiderip, 伦敦，摄影: ZimplePlus Studio
《5：55》，Acrylic, gouache and Chinese rice paper on wood，30.5 x 25.2 cm, 2025
Real Artist Sweat，Exhibition View, Tiderip, London，Photography: ZimplePlus Studio
Real Artist Sweat，展览现场 Tiderip, 伦敦，摄影: ZimplePlus Studio
《5：55》，Acrylic, gouache and Chinese rice paper on wood，30.5 x 25.2 cm, 2025
Real Artist Sweat，Exhibition View, Tiderip, London，Photography: ZimplePlus Studio
张萌萌 Mengmeng Zhang（b.1997）生于江苏连云港，现生活工作于英国伦敦。张萌萌主要从事绘画实践，关注跨文化生活中的碎片化瞬间，并探索记忆与当下、内在情绪与外部环境之间的错位。艺术家常以亲密关系为线索，探索连接与孤独，思考“爱”如何在恋人或自我间发酵。作品跨越画布、宣纸与树脂等不同载体，将若隐若现的图像叙事与绘画材料的流动性相结合，她通过直觉性的用色和动态的笔触，在画面中构建出风格化的角色，呈现介于虚构与真实间的情绪、动作与经验。
张萌萌2025年毕业于斯莱德美术学院绘画硕士课程，2021年获得伦敦艺术大学坎伯韦尔艺术学院绘画硕士学位，2019年毕业于中国美术学院上海设计学院数字出版专业。近期个展包括：《Illusion》，A.Single.Piece Gallery，悉尼（2025）；《走神》，伯年艺术空间，北京（2024）。近期群展包括：《Fire》，Twilight Contemporary，英国（2026）；《Real Artist Sweat》，Tiderip，英国（2025）；《Line Shifu and Bakery Shifu》，Small-Time Project，英国（2025）；《万象》，惟典臻藏，上海（2025）；《Pareidolia》，Mandy Zhang Art，英国（2025）；《Moving Principle》，Arusha Gallery，英国（2025）等。出版物包括《ArtMaze Mag》第30-31期（2023）和《The Space Between》，London Paint Club（2022）等。她于2025年获得Almacantar Studio Award大奖，2024年入围Bloomsbury Festival 新锐艺术奖及The Hari Art Prize。
更多作品请见艺术家网站： www.mengmengzhang.com
Mengmeng Zhang (b. 1997, Lianyungang, Jiangsu, China) lives and works in London, UK. Zhang’s practice is centred on painting, through which she examines fragmented moments within cross-cultural living, exploring the disjunctions between memory and the present, as well as between internal emotional states and external environments. Often anchored in intimate relationships, her work considers the dynamics of connection and solitude, reflecting on how “love” unfolds and transforms between lovers and within the self. Working across canvas, Xuan paper, and resin, Zhang combines elusive, image-based narratives with the fluidity of painterly materials. Through intuitive colour application and gestural mark-making, she constructs stylised figures that occupy a space between fiction and reality, rendering emotional states, bodily gestures, and lived experiences in a state of suspension.
Zhang graduated from the MA Painting programme at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2025, and previously completed an MA in Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, in 2021. She received her BA in Digital Publishing from the Shanghai Institute of Design, China Academy of Art, in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include Illusion, A.Single.Piece Gallery, Sydney (2025); and Zou Shen, Boyi Art Space, Beijing (2024). Selected group exhibitions include Fire, Twilight Contemporary, UK (2026); Real Artist Sweat, Tiderip, UK (2025); Line Shifu and Bakery Shifu, Small-Time Project, UK (2025); Wanxiang, Weidian Collection, Shanghai (2025); Pareidolia, Mandy Zhang Art, UK (2025); and Moving Principle, Arusha Gallery, UK (2025). Her work has been featured in publications including ArtMaze Mag Issue 30–31 (2023) and The Space Between, London Paint Club (2022). She was awarded the Almacantar Studio Award in 2025, and was shortlisted for the Bloomsbury Festival Emerging Artist Award (2024) and The Hari Art Prize (2024).
For more information, please visit: www.mengmengzhang.com