Zhang Ji The Skin of Truth In his Skin of Truth series, Zhang Ji treats religious architecture as an archaeological specimen of an ancient truth persisting within the modern scientific and technological world. The artist extracts patterns from religious architecture and replaces traditional brushstrokes with paint relief, a process grounded in months of meticulous material application. Created using a syringe to patiently apply as much as 120 tubes at 170 millilitres per tube onto the canvas, his works often resemble bas-relief sculptures, with the works modulating between composition and decomposition, and sturdiness and ephemerality. Referencing motifs from religious architecture—specifically mosques, synagogues, and cathedrals in Europe and the Middle East—he creates intricate patterns that are replicated across the canvas. He intends his works to serve as an extended meditation to 21st century viewers of how the visual vocabulary of religion and religious architecture still speaks to the vast and fertile recesses of our collective imagination.