The works of Los Angeles-based artist Charlotte Zhang are inscribed with the sagas of petty criminals, rogues, ruffians, anglers, and indeed tireslashers (her contemporary variant on labels listed in moralizing ‘rogue’ pamphlets such as William Harrison’s Description of England, published with the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I in 1587). Zhang’s fascination with arcane English slang about criminality is part of her broad interest in the long arch of history. She observes how ways in which people across the English-speaking world today are targeted, racialized, and marginalized (using hostile laws, law enforcement, and urban planning); and how this can be traced back to the times of Enclosure Acts and colonial expansion in Elizabethan England. In the process, her intricately layered imagery reveals a paradox:  the most powerful actors in the system (sovereigns, politicians) actively criminalize the so-called outcasts, while also fashioning themselves after said rogues. The coney and the coney-catcher are two sides of the same coin.

For her first solo exhibition in Canada, Zhang combines Bloodsport/Playground Rules (2023—ongoing), a series of sculptures crafted from public bench dividers, engineered to prevent people from lying down; together with Rogue Pamphlets (2025—ongoing), a new series of hand-sewn collages, printed on variously textured fabrics using the sublimation dye technique. The effect is rich in colour, evoking Tudor tapestries and Baroque paintings, and intricately coded with survival tactics for now and tomorrow.

Both bodies of work further inform her first feature film, Tycoon, which the artist describes as “a deconstructed hard-boiled mystery about two young grifters coming of age against the backdrop of a near-future Los Angeles, marred by Olympics turmoil and cockroach conspiracies.”

Produced by Charlotte Zhang and Kenneth Andrew Sarmiento Yuen in the DIY collaborative style of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), in association with The Canada Council for the Arts, Model City Auto, and The Polygon Gallery, Tycoon will have its gallery premiere at The Polygon Gallery in February 2026, as part of this exhibition’ s public programming.

About the Artist
Born in 1999 and based in British Columbia until moving to Los Angeles to pursue studies at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Charlotte Zhang was the 2022 winner of the Phillip B. Lind Prize for Emerging Artists at The Polygon Gallery. Her videos, collages, and sculptural work have since been shown internationally, including festival screenings in New York, Chicago, and Berlin. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Paradise Holds Itself Shut at Goes to Ocean and Ordinary Disasters, Critical Mass (with Tania Collette B.) at Melrose Botanical Garden, both in Los Angeles in 2023. Group exhibitions include Cassandra Press: On Self-Defense – A Cassandra Press Reader In Action at Bergen Kunsthal in Bergen, Norway in 2022; and Scupper, guest curated by Carlos Agredano, at François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, CA, USA in 2024.

Curated by Monika Szewczyk, Audain Chief Curator

Generously supported by
The Lind Family
The Poseley Family

Media Partner
North Shore News

Banner Image: Charlotte Zhang, Explosive Breaching Frame (detail), 2025, 17' x 18' silicon edge graphic.