Zhang Xiaogang was born in 1958 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in southern China. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Zhang was eight years old. At the age of 18, Zhang was sent to 'reeducation camp' to labor alongside peasants. Following the collapse of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Xiaogang was accepted into the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in Chongqing in 1977. He graduated with a B.A. degree in Oil Painting in 1982. In 2007, Zhang was appointed as a professor at Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts. The artist current lives and works in Beijing, China.
Read MoreBased on personal experience and memory, Zhang expresses man’s experiences and emotions through his narrative paintings, placing an emphasis on the existence of history and memory in the preset. In 1995 Zhang Xiaogang presented his Bloodline: Big Family series in an affiliate exhibition during the 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. Zhang continues the investigations of the unceasing revision of memory in his following works.
In his Green Wall series, the artist uses the green wall as a common yet distinctive symbol in the 1960s and 70s in china, evokes the poignancy of memory and a nostalgia for the past—not a real past but a reimaged one, shaped by the anxieties and the wishes of the present. Zhang also begins his experiment on transferring the images of his painting to three dimensions sculptures.
Since 1989 Zhang has had eighteen solo exhibitions and has participated in nearly 150 group exhibitions. His major exhibitions include Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the Soul at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2009), Revision at PACE, New York (2008) and Zhang Xiaogang at Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere, Finland (2007). His work can be found in numerous public collections worldwide, including Shanghai Museum, Fukuoka Museum of Art, National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Pacific Asia Museum in California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Musée de Picardie in Amiens, France.
Ocula Feature Exhibition Takes Feminist Detour at Guangdong Times Museum By Shanyu Zhong, Guangzhou We might consider the exhibition space a domestic one at Guangdong Times Museum, whose exhibition hall has been converted into open spaces, chambers, passageways, and labyrinths for its current show, Forget Sorrow Grass: An Archaeology of Feminine Time (14 September–17 November 2019). Featuring 26 works by a group of 14 artists, including...
Ocula Conversation Dr Uli Sigg By Diana d'Arenberg, Hong Kong 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.
Ocula Feature Art Basel Week By Robin Peckham, Hong Kong 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...
Ocula Conversation Doryun Chong By Anna Dickie, Hong Kong Doryun Chong is Chief Curator at M+, Hong Kong’s super museum for visual culture. Prior to joining M+, Chong was Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and prior to that, he was a curator in the visual arts department at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center from 2003 to 2009. At MoMA, Chong...
Related Press Liu Xiaodong 18 May 2017, https://frieze.com/article/liu-xiaodong-0 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 evident in theexhibition ' Chittagong ', a series of paintings based on in situ researchof the everyday realities of the men working in...
Related Press Art Stage Jakarta to present the best of Indonesian contemporary art 5 August 2016, The Jakarta Post 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...
Related Press M+ Sigg Collection Exhibition 24 February 2016, WestKowloon 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...
Related Press Native global land at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris 21 February 2016, Flash Art 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...
