Zhang He

Zhang He is a Chinese-Canadian painter born in 1963 in Shenyang, China. Trained at the Shenyang Institute in photography, stage design, and oil painting, he relocated to Montreal in 1998, where he has developed an artistic practice that bridges Eastern visual traditions with Western abstraction. His work is shaped by a dynamic interplay between the structure and energy of Chinese calligraphy and the freedom of gesture found in Abstract Expressionism and the Quebec Automatistes. This cultural fusion gives rise to paintings that are both introspective and expansive — fields of exploration for the invisible vital forces that move through the human body and the natural world.

In his studio, Zhang He typically works on canvases laid flat, allowing him to paint with his entire body as well as his mind. His gesture, spontaneous and instinctual, becomes a form of physical meditation — a way to channel chi, or vital energy, and inscribe it onto the canvas. His compositions are vibrant and textured, balancing density and openness, and are infused with a sensitivity to nature’s rhythm and raw emotion. The result is abstract work that remains profoundly human, merging chaos and order, vulnerability and strength, silence and motion.

Zhang He has exhibited internationally at major events such as Art Toronto, the Florence Biennale, the National Gallery of Thailand, and Art Miami. He is represented by several galleries across Canada, including in Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto. His works are held in prestigious private and public collections, including those of Tiffany & Co., LVMH, and various museum institutions. Through a practice that is both deeply contemporary and rooted in the ancestral tradition of gesture, Zhang He continues to explore energy, presence, and the ephemeral beauty of the moment.