Zhang Xiaogang
29 March - 27 April 2013
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| © Zhang Xiaogang
My Mother, 2012
Oil on canvas
6' 6-3/4" x 8' 6-3/8" (200 cm x 260 cm) |
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ZHANG XIAOGANG
29 March - 27 April 2013
Pace is pleased to present a two-venue exhibition of new paintings and
bronzes by Zhang Xiaogang. This is the artist’s second exhibition at
Pace in New York.
Zhang Xiaogang will be on view at 508 and 510 West 25th Street, New
York, from March 29 through April 27. A public reception for the artist
will be held on Thursday, March 28 from 6 to 8 PM. A catalogue with an
essay by Jonathan Fineberg, Gutgsell Professor of Art History and
University Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, will
accompany the exhibition.
The exhibition features Zhang Xiaogang’s first series of painted
bronzes, which render in three dimensions the prototypical characters
who inhabit his paintings. Though the sculptures are an extension of
Zhang’s portraits, the figures can be classified into psychological
types: youthful and idealistic. Sculpted with great clarity in a
political-realist style that echoes the state-sanctioned sculptures of
the Cultural Revolution, the bronzes range in size from six inches to
over five feet tall.
The coolness of the sculptures is further transformed by the painted
surfaces. On each sculpture, color has been painted with active
brushwork, along with occasional patches reminiscent of the stains on
old photographs that were first seen in the paintings of Zhang’s
"Bloodline” series of the 1990s.
Painted in a completely unrealistic manner, the color is influenced by
Tang glazes and the polychrome sculptures of ancient Egypt, including
the sculpted head of Nefertiti. The pupils are painted dark, making the
formal figures seem alive, their eyes blazing with an unexpected
realism.
The exhibition also includes four new oil paintings that continue
Zhang’s inquiries into the domestic interiors to which people returned
after the Cultural Revolution, and in which the artist came of age.
Three of the paintings contain archetypal family figures—a mother, a
father, a child—representing the past and future in the limbo that is
the present. A fourth painting, White Shirt and Blue Trousers (2012),
combines elements of past and present, placing a traditional element of
Chinese paintings—a branch of plum blossoms—alongside a light bulb, a
symbol of modernity. As Fineberg writes, the painting "concerns the
‘still life’ in which memory, imagination, creative play, his cultural
history, and the present may be arranged and rearranged.”
Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China) graduated from
the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing in 1982. During the next
three decades, he established himself as one of the most important
Chinese contemporary painters, whose figurative works delve into the
human psyche, exploring personal and collective memory in the wake of
the Cultural Revolution. He has been the subject of twenty solo
exhibitions, including museum shows at Gallery of the Central Academy of
Fine Arts, Beijing; Hong Kong Arts Center; Today Arts Center, Beijing;
and the Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane,
Australia. He has been featured in international group exhibitions
including the Guangzhou Biennial, China; International Biennial of Sao
Paulo, Brazil; Venice Biennale; Gwangju Biennial, Korea; and Shanghai
Biennale. His work is held in the collections of important museums
worldwide, including the Essl Museum—Kunst der Gegenwart,
Klosterneuburg, Austria; Dongyu Museum of Fine Arts, Shenyang, China;
Fukuoka Museum of Art, Japan; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York;
National Gallery of Australia; Queensland Art Gallery, Australia; San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; and Shanghai Art Museum,
China.
Zhang Xiaogang lives and works in Beijing. He has been represented by Pace since 2007.
www.thepacegallery.com http://artnews.org/pace/?exi=37935&Zhang_Xiaogang
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