Zhang Xiaogang's Oil on Paper Confessions at Long Museum West Bund

Zhang Xiaogang‘s solo exhibition Mayflies (4 March–7 May 2023) currently adorns the walls of Shanghai‘s Long Museum. Featuring over 50 works from the last three years, the exhibition acknowledges the Chinese artist’s standing as a figurehead in the contemporary art world, both in China and abroad.

Pictured are three delicately worked, intimate paintings from Zhang’s new series, ‘Mayfly Diary’. Forming the main narrative of the exhibition, the series demonstrates Zhang’s craftsmanship with paper—tearing, puncturing, and dying before applying oil paint in his characteristically refined manner.

Coinciding with this, Pace Gallery is hosting Zhang’s solo exhibition, Lost (21 March–4 May 2023) in their Hong Kong space. Spotlighting ten new works, the exhibition hones in on Zhang’s still lifes—a departure from portraiture, which has defined his practice in the decades after graduating from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1982.

Main image: Zhang Xiaogang, Mayfly Diary: July 10, 2020 - Dialogue (2020) (detail). Oil on paper with paper and magazine collage. 79.5 x 99.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery, New York/London/Hong Kong/Seoul/Geneva/East Hampton/Palm Beach/Los Angeles.