(China, 1983)
After studying graphism, Mengzhi Zheng attended the Villa Arson in Nice, from 2006 through 2011, where he moved from drawing into 3d volume. Les Maquettes abandonnées [Abandoned Mock-ups] are specially designed sketches: they retain the speed of a graphic gesture, and an automatic nature materialized by a mikado arrangement of wood pieces, cardboard, and paper. These “Inarchitectures,” “uninhabited spaces”, or “nonfunctional spaces,” as defined by the artist, aren’t_intended to be occupied, they’re not scaled down models of future buildings. If they evoke ruins or incompleteness, if they lead the imagination to construct catastrophic scenarios from the past or if they recall huts made out of thin air, they are abandoned only because the exist in between drawing and volume, in the progression from one to the other. These sketches are the foundation of a mental projection scrupulously hung on the wall at eye level, presented frontally and in close quarters encouraging a visual exploration of the little structures, becoming inhabited only for just an instant.
