The China Project

251 Zhang XiAOgang: Shadows in the Soul Both public (since such portraits were commonly taken in the 1950s and 1960s) and intensely private, these haunting images encapsulate many of the issues that Zhang regarded as central to his practice, and which would continue to inform his artistic career — the entanglement of public and private, psychic and material, and interior and exterior spaces. Red ‘bloodlines’ traced from figure to figure express the ties binding each family member to each other, to their ancestors and to the collective family of the Communist entity, while stains and washes of colour express the metaphorical wounds or marks left by traumatic memories. Although Zhang claims to rarely paint from real life — preferring his figures to share a uniform anonymity — the features of his mother and, more recently, his daughter have begun to appear in the carefully built-up layers of paint. In the 1990s, much of Zhang’s recognition came from abroad. The 1991 exhibition ‘“I Don’t Want to Play Cards with Cézanne” and Other Works: Selections from the Chinese New Wave and Avant-Garde Art of the Eighties’ (Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California) was followed by a number of significant international exhibitions in France, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 1994, Zhang showed his ‘Bloodline: The big family’ series at the 22nd International São Paulo Biennial and the 1995 Venice Biennale. In Australia, important group shows included the Museum of Contemporary Art’s ‘Mao Goes Pop’ in 1993, and the Queensland Art Gallery’s ‘The Second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ in 1996. In 1997, Zhang gave up teaching and left the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. In 1999, he moved to Beijing, and he now has studios in Beijing and Chengdu. His marriage to Tang Lei ended in 1999, and he married his second wife Jia Jia in 2007. His work has appeared in numerous significant exhibitions in the 2000s. In 2002, Zhang began his dreamlike ‘Amnesia and memory’ series which, like the ‘Bloodline: The big family’ series, examines the way memories are constantly revised in the present. Other recent works of the 2000s include his photographic series ‘Description’, in which Zhang inscribes diary-style entries onto unrelated images captured from popular movies and television series; and his ‘In-Out’ series (started in 2006), in which the emphasis is on memories embodied by inanimate objects. Symbols of time and memory — electric light bulbs, stains of light or spilled ink — litter these canvases and are dispersed among symbols of communication associated with public and private spheres, including televisions and loud speakers, as well as references to historical moments. Zhang has commented that his ‘work mainly reflects my childhood and teenage memories’, and this is evident in his ‘Green wall’ series of 2008, in which the institutional colour — fashionable during the Cultural Revolution for home interiors and public buildings — enables Zhang to blur and complicate public and private spheres. 12 A recent series of imposing, large-scale canvases has seen Zhang return to the surrealist motifs of his youth, with severed limbs and detached, but still beating, hearts puncturing scenes in which figures lounge in chairs amidst a vast industrial landscape. Zhang Xiaogang’s examination of the omnipresence and selectiveness of memory is made poignant by the fact that the artist is once again living through a period of change and turmoil in China’s rapidly developing landscape, as buildings are razed and cities transformed, often overnight. He comments, ‘In China history is like water, it flows and disappears’. 13 His art works — and he has recently moved to casting sculptures in bronze — create a dialogue with the past, capturing the intangible emotions of generations. endnotes 1 ‘Interview with Zhang Xiaogang’, transcript for CNN Talk Asia : <http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/ asiapcf/07/19/talkasia.zhang.script/index.html>, viewed February 2009. 2 Li Xianting, in Umbilical Cord of History: Paintings by Zhang Xiaogang [exhibition catalogue], Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, 2004, p.21. 3 David Barboza, ‘A Chinese painter’s new struggle: To meet demand’, New York Times , 31 August 2005, <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/arts/ design/31zhan.html>, viewed February 2009. 4 ‘Interview with Zhang Xiaogang’, transcript for CNN Talk Asia . 5 ‘Interview with Zhang Xiaogang’, transcript for CNN Talk Asia . 6 Riitta Valorinta, Lu Peng, Julia Colman and Virpi Nikkari, Zhang Xiaogang [exhibition catalogue], Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere, Finland, 2007, p.71. 7 Zhang Xiaogang , p.74. 8 Zhang Xiaogang, interview with Alice Xin Liu, Urbane Magazine , February 2008, p.26. 9 Chronology compiled by Irene S Leung and Michael S K Siu, in Gao Minglu (ed.), Inside Out: New Chinese Art , Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998, pp.197–211. 10 Zhang Xiaogang, in Michael Donohue, ‘The history boy’, W Magazine , November 2008, <http://www.wmagazine . com/artdesign/2008/11/zhang_xiaogang?currentPage=1 >, viewed 24 February 2009. 11 Jane McCartney, ‘Meet Zhang Xiaogang, China’s hottest artist’, The Times , 26 January, 2008, <http:// entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_ entertainment/visual_arts/article3233277.ece>, viewed February 2009. 12 ‘Interview with Zhang Xiaogang’, transcript for CNN Talk Asia . 13 McCartney, ‘Meet Zhang Xiaogang, China’s hottest artist’, The Times . The artist’s studio at Hegezhuang district, Beijing, 2008 / Courtesy: The artist