Guest: When you translate an idea into a painting, the space for expression is inherently limited—it offers only a small entry point. In the process of creating, you might find yourself grappling with this constraint. Given that your inspiration stems from movement—something you see as the most primal and purest form of vitality—how do you approach your next work? Beyond using shape as a means of articulation, in what other ways do you envisage expressing this idea?

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Zhu: My approach to making work is never just about articulating a fixed concept. Take motion, for instance—it’s something I might speak about to convey my ideas, but I don’t see it as a concept that needs to be defined. Rather, it’s a way of living, a way of being, rather than simply a theory or an idea.

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With Night Castle, this was the first time I experimented with working in a series. I had never approached my practice in this way before, but I wanted to try extracting a particular aspect of a broader way of living or thinking and exploring it in isolation. I don’t see a series as a container for everything I want to express—instead, I let it focus on a specific facet, in this case, the imagined part. The more practical or performative aspects of the idea—things that might take shape as performance or other forms—are something I might explore in future works.

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I take a relatively fluid and open approach to my practice. My works aren’t there to carry the weight of an entire concept; they each play a role in expressing a particular moment or fragment of thought. That’s why, after completing these twenty or so works, I felt that Night Castle had reached its natural conclusion—I won’t return to this way of making again, because for me, that particular exploration is complete.

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My approach to making is always staged—each series offers a way of looking at just one part of an idea, rather than attempting to define it in full. Night Castle, for instance, explored the imaginary dimension of a concept, but future works might engage with its more practical, performative aspects—perhaps through performance itself, or through entirely different mediums. This way, my work remains open-ended, allowing it to evolve freely rather than being confined to a fixed mode of expression.