Exhibition is picture of success
Zhang works on his Stage No 5: Kale at his studio in Beijing.[Photo provided to China Daily]
One of the prominent Chinese artists of the contemporary scene, Zhang Xiaogang is presenting his first solo exhibition in Shanghai.
Zhang Xiaogang: Mayflies, from March 4 to May 7, at the Long Museum West Bund, marks the first public solo show of Zhang's creations in the past three years.
More than 80 artworks, including oil paintings on paper and on canvas, installation and sketches, are on display.
In Chinese literature, the mayfly is often associated with philosophical ideas about the transience and insignificance of human existence, as the tiny creatures are known for their extremely short life span and large clusters in summer.
Zhang Xiaogang: Mayflies — the artist's first solo exhibition in Shanghai, which is set to run through May 7 — features more than 80 artworks, including Light No 6.[Photo provided to China Daily]
In the past three years, Zhang spent more time at home than ever before due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and created the Mayfly Diary series of paintings on paper, depicting surrealistic and dramatic scenes in closed household spaces, such as the bathroom and bedroom.
The series of paintings are like "comic strips that recorded my feelings and thoughts about a lot of things," Zhang said at the exhibition's opening on March 4. He began to paint on paper in 2018, when preparing for a solo exhibition in New York. As a creative medium, paper made him feel intimate and relaxed. Also, he says, paper is versatile, you can tear it up, soak it in water and shape it into collage.
Zhang Xiaogang: Mayflies — the artist's first solo exhibition in Shanghai, which is set to run through May 7 — features more than 80 artworks, including Light No 7.[Photo provided to China Daily]
He chose it to express his fragmented ideas, and reflection on the flow of time.
Zhang, being an indispensable figure in contemporary art history, has created an imagery world of his own, says Li Jia, curator of the exhibition. Her intention was to build a channel that helps audiences to enter the artist's world, and hopefully find strength and consolation in art.
On exhibition are a series of 16 sketches entitled The Ghost Between Black and White, which Zhang created in 1984 when he was ill and hospitalized.
The nightmarish imagery inspired by his experience in the hospital at that time was in "parallel with the Mayfly series, although they are almost 40 years apart," says Wang Wei, founding director of the Long Museum. "They are an interior monologue in response to similar experiences in the artist's life, like an echo from the distant beginning of his creative path."
Zhang Xiaogang: Mayflies — the artist's first solo exhibition in Shanghai, which is set to run through May 7 — features more than 80 artworks, including Mayfly Diary: May 8, 2022.[Photo provided to China Daily]
Born in Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan province, in 1958, Zhang graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982. His early paintings showed influences from German expressionism and surrealism, and in the early 1990s, inspired by a family photograph at his parents' house, he began to paint the series known as Bloodlines — Big Family.
These monochromatic and stylized portraits of Chinese families, reminiscent of old family photos in almost every Chinese household through the latter half of the 20th century, evoked a wide resonance, and won international recognition, when they were first exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1994.
In 2006, at Sotheby's inaugural New York sale of Chinese contemporary art, one of Zhang's paintings of the Bloodlines — Big Family series soared to $979,200 from the estimated price of $250,000 to $350,000.
It is said that the sale marked the rise of contemporary Chinese art in the global market, and Zhang has ever since remained a prominent figure at art auctions from home and abroad. On Feb 22, a painting from the same series fetched 12.65 million yuan ($1.83 million) at an event jointly presented by two auction houses Yongle and Phillips.
While he was happy that his paintings have continuously been well received in the art market, Zhang says the auction price no longer has anything to do with him, because the paintings that are circulated in the market were created more than 10 years ago, and he has moved on.
"At first it felt novel and exciting, but then after years of ups and downs of the market, you would regain the peace of your mind, and go on with your work unaffected," he says.
"You can't possibly turn back to do more Big Family paintings just because the art market favored them.
A poster of the exhibition.[Photo provided to China Daily]
"Artists are always creating for the future. What matters is your work, and how you keep going forward."
Among his later oil paintings, the Stage and Light series are featured at the exhibition in Shanghai.
While echoing Mayfly Diary in terms of content, these two series form a stark contrast from Mayfly Diary in terms of size. Stage: Castle No 3 spreads 6 meters long. It takes on and develops the theme of unreal landscapes explored by Zhang in his work around 2008, according to curator Li.
"Incorporating partial elements from myth, imagination, fiction and reality, the artist has described his role as more akin to that of an architect, attempting to piece together from various components a kind of spaceship, a remote world in which the vastness of epic and the disorder of absurdity coexist to form a response to a well-known modern fable," she says.