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ZHANG Xiaogang, <Bloodline: Big Family No.3>, Oil on canvas, 190x150cm, 1996 © Chang Tsong Zung's Collection
ZHANG Xiaogang, <Wasteland Series No. 3>, Oil on paper, 25.7x19.5cm, 1988
ZHANG Xiaogang, <Wasteland Series No. 4>, Oil on paper, 19.4x27cm, 1988
[China] ZHANG Xiaogang Bloodline: Big Family No.3 Wasteland Series No. 3 Wasteland Series No. 4
An artist best known from the “New Figurative Image” in the ’85 Art New Wave Movement and a member of the “Southwest Artists Research Group”, Zhang Xiaogang endured loneliness enshrouded by death in his “phase confronting with the devil” upon graduating from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Soon, he entered the phase of being “on the shore”, where religious motifs and iconic subject became the basis of his paintings. Wasteland series is an embodiment of that period, in which Zhang’s earlier artistic vernaculars of the surreal, his broad humanistic concerns and philosophical thinking were well represented. As the political upheaval unfolded in 1989, it urged him to “return to the world of the people”, henceforth, the various elements developed thereafter in his artistic itinerary began to formulate gradually. In 1994, Zhang created the Bloodline series based on the concept of “blood relationships,” when he had fully departed from the expressionism framework. The gray images convey an oppressed history, and the masks of the revolutionary period portraits provoke the collective memories of that particular period. It is also with this series he established unique aesthetic motifs that became a classical icon in the history of Chinese contemporary art. |
