Zhang's work investigates the notion of 'relationship' while 'relationship' is omnipresent in her work as well. This is much like the message conveyed by those grids: every 'now' embeds the 'past', and faintly indicates the 'future', each component is under the influence of the whole, yet gradually builds up to the appearence of the whole.
Prior to the first brushstroke, Zhang Xuerui sets the fundamental tone of the canvas, and samples the temporal direction and degrees of the gradual process with smaller sketches. The piece originates with pre-set colours at three corners of the canvas. During the coherent, inter-locked colouring process, meticulous shading of tones progressively blend the lattices, evolving and congregating into a “spectrum” on the face of the blank canvas. A purely visual space, detached from specific, identifiable objects, is thus fostered.