'Paradise Program' takes unorthodox view at life and death
To better assist her storytelling, Zhang took care with art of camera language in Paradise Program, fully taking advantages the changes in emotion colors can create. The use of layered lighting not only makes the details abundant, but also creates the unique texture of each space. The film also uses semiotics to assist the narration, which further broadens the narrative dimension of the story.
Inspired by director Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange, Zhang partnered with American artist David Gibney to show his contemporary sculpture and great architecture skill in Paradise Program. David Gibney takes sculpture as major creative media and good at using large-scale, ready-made material with strong historical sense for combined art creation. The language of material itself is used to construct a context based on history, story, event and memory, which plays an instructive and vigilant role for present and the future. After this cooperation, in 2020, Zhang once again cooperated with Xiong Wei, an emerging Chinese contemporary artist in North America, and combined experimental film with installation and performance art, opening up more possibilities for it. Several creative ideas about intimacy and consumerism are put forward and under active preparation.