ZHANG DING：20% ≤ 21g
Each connection is a manifestation of your free will.
At each connection the system builds your dependency.
Each connection is an evidence of existence.
Each connection is the forging of the future
On November 14, 2025, the fashion brand SANKUANZ will inaugurate its new space, SANKUANZ ART SPACE, with an exhibition of Zhang Ding’s works entitled “20% ≤ 21g”. For this show, the artist will present a new series of installations and paintings based on the uniqueness of the space and centered around the theme of the inextricable relation between technology and human in our contemporary society.
Over the past decade, the continuous rise of Big Tech companies and the consequent increasing presence of AI and digital technologies in our life radically changed consumer behavior and social landscape, from smart cities to self-driving automobiles, imposing the relevance and control of these companies in our society. Most digital technologies decisions are taken without the majority, and there is still a quite large blurry area on how the internet works, but everyone accepts it even though trust keeps crumbling. We seem to be beneficiaries while we in fact are mostly spectators, drained with anxiety and confused.
The influence is such that as the black screens of our digital devices remind us that only 20% of battery is left - a countdown to our imminent disconnection with the digital driven world - our heart starts to race, stress level increases. A small detail big enough to alter our sense of security, to make the soul tremble. 21 g, the supposed weight of the soul, a romanticized number largely referred to in popular culture is used here into an absurd existential equation where life is translated into the logic of battery energy storage.
When charge falls below 20%, you are no longer whole.
BRANCUSI-ESQUE ETERNAL POWER series
2025
Following his previous series of installations “Battery” and “Good Day Everyday”, “20% ≤ 21g” exhibited works consist of two sets of two marble heads based on new energy vehicle charging devices and are respectively inspired by Brancusi’s Tête d'enfant endormi and Prometheus (with for this last realistic human ears). A long silicon cable connects both marble heads plugged on one end at the neck of Prometheus and on the other to the mouth of the sleeping child. On the surface, various sentences written by the artist are inscribed, while each head is marked with a recurrent symbol: an eagle from a study by Frans Synders for Peter Paul Rubens’ famous Prometheus Bound, and the letters Pm (standing for the chemical element ‘Promethium’), named after the Greek mythology Titan to symbolize "both the daring and the possible misuse of mankind's intellect”.
Modern art history works are revisited here through the lens of humanoid robotic aesthetics: a “Brancusi-esque style’ for cold machine shells, a decoration void of emotions used by consumers in their everyday life ritual.
On the 2nd floor of the gallery, highly polished, vibrant colored glaze glass limited edition sculptures of Prometheus ‘power strip’, in blue, pink, gold, transparent and black, are displayed over a golden table.
