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One Thousand Self-Portrait
solo exhibition
19.07.2025-09.09.2025
Blue Art Gallery
123 Dongwang street
Hechai 1972
Baohe district
Hefei
China 一千个哈里
个展
2025.07.19-2025.09.09
蓝色美术馆
安徽省合肥市包河区
合柴1972 
东望街123号In Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, the protagonist Harry Haller encounters “a thousand images of himself” within the Magic Theater. He once believed he was torn between the dualities of the “civilized man” and the “beast,” yet at that moment he realizes: the individual is far from a unified self, but rather a complex constellation of latent possibilities, desires, experiences, and illusions. Each “I” is real; each “I” is a fragment of his being.

Zhang Nan’s paintings continuously revolve around the human figure—particularly faces and gestures that emerge from the depths of the self, carrying emotions and states of existence that resist articulation. Her figures are not bound to specific identities; they exist in ambiguity and transformation. They gaze, remain silent, twist, and pause—at times filled with desire, at others on the verge of dissolution. They are intuitive manifestations of inner conditions, and simultaneously, Zhang Nan’s process of self-understanding through painting.

In a certain sense, every painting is a self-portrait, a projection of the self. “One Thousand Self-Portraits” is not a literal number but a metaphor—pointing to the multiplicity and fragmentation of inner life, as well as a resistance to the myth of a unified self. As the infinite reflections in a mirrored room suggest, only by acknowledging that the self can possess a thousand faces can one approach true freedom.

Life unfolds as a multidimensional field of experience, where the potential for multiple selves resides within individual consciousness. Together, we are invited to explore the metaphor of the “Thousand-Faced Harry,” expanding the boundaries of our awareness of what we might become.

Curator Mengru Wang
26.06.2025














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