Leah Ke Yi Zheng On Painting as a Relational Phenomenon

A painting, for Leah Ke Yi Zheng, is not an object but a dynamic phenomenon, always experienced in relation to its context. Her latest exhibition, which recently closed at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, featured a sequence of 64 paintings based on the hexagrams of the I Ching (Book of Changes), a foundational text in Chinese philosophy that reflects on the changing nature of existence, its transience and the necessity of embracing continuous evolution.

When Observer met the artist during EXPO CHICAGO to walk through the show in its final days, Yi Zheng explained that, from the outset, she conceived it as a single, integrated work. The entire project was envisioned through a close dialogue with architecture, in which the paintings and the spatial environment are designed to operate as one system. At the beginning of every project, each painting starts with a strong conceptual construction, Yi Zheng explained. “In all of my works, there’s a conceptual beginning. Then, in the process of painting, I enter a different mindset, a kind of painting zone, which I think most painters share. It’s a place of intuition.”

Born and raised in the small rural city of Wuyishan, China, Yi Zheng originally came to the United States as a law student but later left that path to focus on the arts. Over time, particularly after this project, painting has become the central focus of her life and thinking, as the intensity and enthusiasm of her description of the work clearly show. Her process is deeply meditative, rooted in close contact with the work itself. A prolonged observation of light within a space, and a reflection on how it interacts with the work, became a central part of her experience. “My favorite moment was documenting the light here for hours,” she recounted.

A group of paintings of the same size hangs on two opposite walls, creating two parallel sequences and establishing a specific rhythm along the room’s perimeter. Two larger works cover the windows, functioning as porous filters between the interior and the outside world, while smaller paintings of the same size as the long sequences are introduced within the window structure itself. Both become luminous as they interact with light. At the center, two monumental canvases of contrasting tones—one more atmospheric and pastel, the other darker and denser—anchor the space, serving as an energetic nucleus. “Some paintings hang in front of the windows, very vulnerably. They become membranes, or screens,” she said. “The window is no longer a window; it becomes a transparent wall.”

Yi Zheng described the installed works as small architectural adjustments, including modifications to ceilings, windows and wall proportions, introduced to situate the paintings within the space while also drawing attention to the architecture itself. These interventions are temporary and will be reversed after the exhibition, embracing the notion that space and painting exist in continuous flux, evolving with the context in which they are shown.

“The show is like a machine, with its own mechanisms. Each painting is also a kind of operator,” Yi Zheng reflected. On a sunny day, light enters and activates the works, creating a sense of pure energy. On a cloudy day, or as the sun sets, that mood shifts. “As you move from one painting to another, you experience differences. After seeing all 64, what remains is a memory of variation, almost an epiphany of differences. That produces a kind of pure energy.”

If historically, painting has belonged to the wall, Yi Zheng wants to challenge and extend that condition. “All of my works deal with shape. Some are very pronounced, others involve subtle, almost imperceptible shifts,” she pointed out, describing her attempt to move away from the traditional rectangular format of painting and challenge that convention.

All of Yi Zheng’s works are made of silk on hand-built hardwood stretchers, allowing her to work through subtly delicate variations. “To push something, you must first understand what it has been,” she said, reflecting on her engagement with the traditions of painting. She does this across both Western and Eastern perspectives; silk painting is historically Chinese, but her works do not resemble traditional Chinese painting, even as that history remains present. Drawing from traditional Chinese philosophy as much as from technique, she explores both the aesthetic and psychological effects of transformation, multiplicity and variation.

The translucency and layering that characterize her work are produced through the interaction of silk, paint and light. Layering fabric and pigment redirects light, producing illuminated surfaces. Constructing the stretchers herself—selecting the wood and building everything from the ground up—further contributes to these effects. “That’s why transparency varies,” she explained. “Some works reflect light through multiple layers before reaching your eye, while others reflect directly from the wall.”

Yi Zheng describes this as partly the result of the material and partly the result of the way she paints. “I control how the paint dries and how it adheres to the surface. I’m using very ordinary materials, but the technique gives the work a different quality. It’s really about process, a collaboration between me and the material.”

There are different degrees of transparency, opacity, light and darkness, subtle or more pronounced variations that one can notice between the different works, as well as within every single painting, as their appearance evolves in relation to changes in the environment.

“Light and darkness are embedded in the space. When strong light enters, a dark painting can become luminous, then shift again,” Yi Zheng observed. For this reason, she argues, color is no longer simply pigment, but the result of a collaboration between object, environment and viewer. “Light itself is weightless energy. It interacts with the paintings, activating them. That’s why my engagement with architecture is subtle; it’s a collaboration, not a disruption.”

While the artist conceived each work individually, she then carefully composed them within the space. The works are numbered, and she made a maquette to study how each painting would interact, contributing to the unfolding of this phenomenological experience. “The process is sequential, like walking. I develop one group, which informs the next,” she said. “It’s like constructing a building, the overall form is known, but the details emerge gradually. Every painting, large or small, carries equal weight.”

Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s work is not centered on individual paintings but on the relationships between them as a system within space. For this reason, she said, her work tends to be primarily site-specific—yet even in group exhibitions, she always tries to create relational structures between works.

Though all of this could be read as a more austere post-structuralist exercise, closer to Minimalism or institutional critique, something more physical yet almost spiritual animates Yi Zheng’s practice, anchoring it in the traditional principle of qi, the vital force at the center of Chinese philosophy. At the heart of her research is a notion of painting as a phenomenon—one that exposes the nature of perception as relational and transitional, reminding us that we do not function as isolated entities but as relational ones, subject to the effects of the natural cycles and external circumstances unfolding around us.

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