Zhang Xiaogang was born in 1958 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in southern China. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Zhang's parents were forced to give up their government posts, leave Zhang and his three brothers behind, and go to a 'study camp' in the countryside. Following the collapse of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Zhang was accepted into the prestigious Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in Chongqing in 1977. In 1995 Zhang Xiaogang presented his Bloodline: Big Family series in an exhibition entitled The Other Face: Three Chinese Artists as part of the larger international exhibition Identità e Alterità, installed in the Italian Pavilion during the centenary 46th Venice Biennale. Drawn from formal family portraits, the paintings represent both the individual and the faceless masses of China at once. The figures, often dressed in identical Mao suits, have distinctive red blood lines which demonstrate the links between people.
Gu Wenda's performance is just one example of how art in the city is blooming, as the new Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition nears completion and new exhibitions open at OCT Loft
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I'm very much a fan of the public institution. I think only the public institution can provide the long-term guarantee that it will continue to exist and it will be 'the' public memory.
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It is a funny thing to return as a visitor to a city one once called home: not so long ago I was a de facto host for the descending hordes during ArtHK and later Art Basel Hong Kong, but this year, for the first time, I am seeing it all through the eyes of an art tourist. As a city and as an art event, Hong Kong has always been a tightly wound...
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Contemporary art has broken down the boundaries of its traditional mediums, which points us in the direction of where a 21st-century museum should be going.
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Engaged with photography, film and painting for the past three decades, Liu Xiaodong has described his style as an 'open' one that explores thespaces between realism and abstraction. This vision is
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The art fair that has helped Singapore become an international hub for contemporary art is coming to Jakarta – bringing outstanding Indonesian and foreign collections together under one roof. Held from Friday until Sunday at the Sheraton Grand Jakarta Gandaria City hotel in South Jakarta, the first-ever Art Stage Jakarta will see the...
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Comprising more than eighty works by fifty artists – including Ai Weiwei, Fang Lijun, Geng Jianyi, Huang Yong Ping, Zhang Peili, and Zhang Xiaogang – this is the first-ever chronological exhibition about the emergence of Chinese contemporary art. It shows both the development of Chinese contemporary art and a glimpse of the collection...
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France has always been a country of asylum for Chinese artists. After the First World War, it was where painters such as Zao Wou-ki and Chu Teh-Chun developed their careers. In the 1990s, Paris became a vanguard destination for contemporary Chinese artists fleeing the Tiananmen revolution, like Yan Pei Ming and Huang Yong Ping. At that time former...
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