Zhang Xiaogang
Dicecream Magazine🔳Zhang Xiaogang (born in 1958) is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter.
Paintings in his Bloodline series are predominantly monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family portraits from the 1950s and 1960s.
Recently, he also created sculptures, translating for the first time into three dimensions many characters of the sort seen in his "Bloodlines—Big Family" portrait series. These sculptures have featured in many exhibits and continue his work as one of China's leading, and most highly sought-after, contemporary artists.
Western painters including Richter, Picasso and Dalí are influences. Zhang said: "I read in a book once a few words by British experimental artist Eduardo Paolozzi, which were very influential for me: “‘a person can very easily have the right idea, but choose the wrong means to express it. Or he can have the right means, but lack a clear idea.'"
Zhang also cites his discovery of photos of his mother as a young, attractive woman as a key inspiration for the Bloodline series.
After participating "I Don't Want to Play Cards with Cézanne" and Other Works, organized by the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California, Zhang started thinking about his way of work and decided not to paint same way with famous Western art and be an independent artist.
Current exhibitions:
Auction 1100 - Contemporary Art II
Dec 2, 2017
Kunsthaus Lempertz
Cologne, Germany
