zdeneksklenar.cz€¦ · Web viewSalvátorská 6, Praha 1 – Staré Město Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář s.r.o., Smetanovo nábřeží 334/4, Praha 1 – Staré Město, IČ 27145948

Salvátorská 6, Praha 1 – Staré Město

Zhang Xiaogang – The Plum Tree and The Girl

20 January – 10 May 2015

www.zdeneksklenar.czPress Release14 January 2015

The solo exhibition of the world renowned Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang, The Plum Tree and the Girl, opens in the Zdeněk Sklenář Gallery venue in Salvátorská 6, Prague. The exhibition is curated by Professor Lü Peng, a personal friend of the artist and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chengdu, China. Professor Lü Peng will also deliver the inaugural address at the exhibition opening on January 19, at 7 pm. He will introduce the original etchings for The Plum Tree and the Girl that Zhang Xiaogang created in a limited edition of 99 prints made especially for Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář’s 27 Lines Edition of Original Prints, and the eponymous oil painting on canvas, the first Zhang Xiaogang painting to be exhibited in the Czech Republic. The exhibition will also present the original print templates. Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář has already brought out several dozen editions of prints by major Czech artists as part of their 27 Lines Edition, including Karel Malich, Václav Boštík, Milan Grygar and Zdeněk Sýkora. The gallery has published original prints from as early as 1993, and the Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang is the first world-renowned international artists to be represented in this edition. Zdeněk Sklenář on the singularity of the presentation of The Plum Tree and the Girl at the Zdeněk Sklenář Gallery“When I boarded the Beijing – Abu Dhabi – Prague flight on December 2, 2014, at 11:05 pm local time, it was with a sense of solemnity of the moment. I was thinking of Dr. Vincenc Kramář, wondering what he must have felt back in 1910, as he was bringing to the Czech Lands the first works by Pablo Picasso, works that are now the pride of our homeland. I was overcome with joy, because with me on board the plane were dozens

Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář s.r.o., Smetanovo nábřeží 334/4, Praha 1 – Staré Město, IČ 27145948 DIČ CZ27145948 zastoupená jednatelem Zdeňkem

Sklenářem, zapsaná v obchodním rejstříku vedeném u MěS v Praze v oddíle C, vložka č. 99745 Tel: +420 605 936 390 E-mail:

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of prints created by the famous Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang, made especially for Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář’s 27 Lines Edition. Made especially for all of us here! And the oil on canvas, which after landing in Prague became the first painting by this great artist to be presented in the Czech Republic. Let me thus, by presenting this exhibition in my gallery, present to you both gems entitled The Plum Tree and the Girl." Zdeněk Sklenář

Profesor Lü Peng on The Plum Tree and the GirlOften it is the unfathomable paths of destiny that guide the artist to create a particular picture. Picasso, for example, painted his daughter Paloma; the pictures are rather small in format, yet fascinating and exceptional, since they also portray the artist’s state of mind at that period of his life. Zhang Xiaogang’s The Plum Tree and the Girl also belongs to this type of work of art. It depicts a delicate girl seated in a chair, and behind her, a simple plum tree branch in blossom. The picture is painted in the same style as Zhang Xiaogang’s most famous cycle of paintings, Bloodline: the Big Family: the greyish tone, a yellow stain of mysterious origin on the girl’s face, as well as her peculiar mood, which becomes haunting, and makes one wonder. Yet for some reason here the girl is uncharacteristically portrayed in profile, and in combination with the plum tree branch behind the girl’s body, this angle forms a robust unity. The plum tree branch is a significant element in the composition of the picture, representing as it does the artist’s experiment of recent years, in which he places within his canvases classical symbols derived from the Chinese tradition. His preoccupation with the elementary gene pool of his native tradition has caused him to look for ways of incorporating it organically into his own art. The plum tree branch in the present picture carries a wealth of poignant symbolic meanings. In traditional Confucian culture, the plum tree, together with the bamboo, the chrysanthemum and the orchid, is one of the “four noble plants”, and alongside the bamboo and the pine tree, it is also one of the “three friends of winter”. It represents pure dignity, uprightness and humility. Deep in wintertime, the plum is the first of all plants to blossom, heralding the arrival of hope.



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Wang Anshi (1021–1086), the famed scholar and writer of the Northern Song Era, wrote the following poem: Back by a wall, a plum tree blossoms white,In defiance of the freezing winter,No, ´tis not the snow, for even from afar,I can feel its delicate, sweet scent. Lü Peng on Zhang Xiaogang

Zhang Xiaogang is an artist who, despite being very much part of the phenomena of early 1990s Chinese art, has always held an independent position as an artist. He has developed an aesthetic style so much his own and so original that his works cannot be comprehended by simply categorizing them within one or another period trends, even though he has adopted some of their features.

Zhang Xiaogang was born in 1958 in Kunming, the capital of China’s southern province Yunnan, and finished his studies in oil painting at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982. He embarked on his artistic career in the turbulent atmosphere of the early 1980s; after a phase of lyrical expressionism, he went through a period he refers to as “diabolical”.

These brooding years of existential isolation were defined by an impassioned reading of western philosophy and literature and listening to western music. In 1984 Zhang Xiaogang fell seriously ill. It was then that he abandoned the pastoral motifs of the previous period and began to portray the world of spirits and Surrealist phantoms. When he had dealt with the experience of near death through painting, his interest shifted towards philosophical themes.

The latter half of the 1980s is known in Chinese art as the era of the “rebirth of concepts” and a preoccupation with fundamental questions, that is, “who we are, where we come from, and where are we going.” There are many letters from this period that the artist wrote to his friends, such as one addressed to the painter Mao Xuhui, in which Zhang Xiaogang writes: “Art is the highest and most precious thing we have in this world, it is art that must form the foundation of our lives. In the depth of the artist’s soul, there lies something solemn, a sense of great responsibility… If it weren’t for this great, ardent love, perhaps we would



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not have pulled through, our eyes brimming with tears, our teeth clenched. We would not have pulled through this time of hardship, when society has slammed its door in our faces.” In terms of subject matter, this period of “the other shore” is not that different from Zhang Xiaogang’s previous “diabolical” period, except that he now subjected the questions of life and death to more rational scrutiny. He embarked on experiments with paper and colours. For example, he would apply a layer of paint to paper, carving contours in it with a knife, or else would simply cover a part of the picture with paint while carefully elaborating the rest. This category of experimental works also features a cycle of paintings entitled Lost Dreams, consisting of about forty poetic works dating to the years 1986–1988. The triptych Eternal Love (1988) is considered as his early representative piece. Zhang Xiaogang was a passionate albeit less then systematic reader of Western thinkers and writers. He also listened to European classical music, particularly music he perceived as tragic. He was however also fond of other musical genres, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” album, for example, was a particular favourite. His 1989 painting Infinite Sea features a multitude of skulls. Until 1991 the artist remained intensely preoccupied with the subject of life and death.

In 1992 party leader Deng Xiaoping’s speeches during his tour of Southern China changed the political atmosphere that had defined the country in the period since June 1989. People living in coastal regions in particular realized that they could now assert themselves in a market economy and new situation. At the beginning of that year, Zhang Xiaogang left for Germany, where for the first time in his life he had the opportunity to be exposed first hand to the works of the great Western artists he respected and admired. The letters he sent to friends from his sojourn in Germany express his disappointment that the Documenta in Kassel failed to feature eminent artists such as Joseph Beuys or Anselm Kiefer. At the same time, he was struck by the luxurious and aristocratic atmosphere of the event, the pomp with which contemporary Western art was presented. This was very much at odds with Chinese notions of Western artists’ living conditions. It was also in stark contrast with the “underground” ethos of the K18 exhibition, which opened at the same time in Kassel, representing Chinese avant-garde artists such as Lü Shengzhong, Wang Luyan, Ni Haifeng and Li Shan.

In the second half of 1992, Zhang Xiaogang started using the term “contemporary art”. It is as though he found that his existentialist quest was the plumbing of a bottomless abyss – although the fascination with melancholy and nostalgia would remain with him.



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How to engage with contemporary art? Zhang Xiaogang believed that contemporary art must be defined by originality (to assert itself with its own artistic language) and it must overcome the bounds of formalism (thinking in terms of visual originality, of “new painting”, or “new styles”). This was what he saw as the principal task that contemporary Chinese artists must define and find the answer to. An acute observer of reality, he clearly saw the importance of transforming the language of art. In 1993 he called himself a “wanderer through ideas,” At the exhibition Post ‘89: China’s New Art, held in Hong Kong in March 1993, his work entitled Notes was featured in the section “The Wounded Romantic Spirit”. However, the sections that garnered the most attention were “Political Pop Art” (Wang Guangyi, Yu Youhan and Li Shan) and works in the style of “Cynical Realism: Irreverence and Malaise“ (Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Wang Jingsong, Liu Xiaodong).

In 1993 Zhang Xiaogang created several paintings that heralded a turning point in his oeuvre: Yellow Portrait, Red Portrait, Bloodline: Mother and Son, and Red Baby. Yellow and Red Portrait depicted his friends, the painters Mao Xuhui and Ye Yongqing. The two pictures can be seen as an attempt to break from a distinctive expressionist visual style. Bloodline: Mother and Son and Red Baby form a thematic unity with the two portraits, focusing on themes of kinship by blood, life, growing up, coming of age and death. In this sense, he did not entirely depart from the themes which had preoccupied him previously; there is a similar use of Surrealist psychological strategies, random lighting effects and the illogical composition of objects in the visual field. At the end of 1993, Zhang Xiaogang made a decisive step towards a typified scheme of his own. In 1994 he presented the new cycle Bloodline: The Big Family, in which he entirely abandoned the expressionist “framework”. What made the artist change his form of expression? At the time, he explained the change in the following terms: “My recent works are inspired by an old family album of photographs and charcoal portraits, the kind you come across about everywhere in the streets of China, that is, apart from all the other things that both the past and the present place in our minds. I cannot put my finger on the exact nerve tweaked by these old, carefully retouched photographs, but I had to think about them incessantly, I liked them so much. And perhaps it is the influence of the time we are living in, that they do not offer simply a nostalgic pleasure, but instead they speak to us in a certain naïve, although perhaps illusory visual language. They confirmed for me the sense that mystical mannerism and overblown romanticism were not for me. The visual language of old photographs and portraits brought to my attention a phenomenon familiar enough, yet



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something I had not paid sufficient attention to until then. One of its features was the aesthetic ideal of the ordinary Chinese person, defined by the suppression of individuality and the way they stress their allegiance to a collective identity, their inexpressiveness and neutrality, and yet their sense of being strongly poetic.”

Zhang Xiaogang hails from a typical family of “revolutionary cadres” of the 1950s. Families like his sometimes kept old photographs from the early revolutionary and reconstruction years. These photographs are radically different from earlier family portraits depicting figures in traditional long silk garments, redolent of times long past. Photographs from the 1940s – 1960s had an emotional as well as historical connection with people who were still alive – parents and children who had lived through those momentous historical epochs together. When in 1993 Zhang Xiaogang painted the pictures from the cycle Gate of Heavenly Peace in his cramped room in Chengdu, he would still render them in an “expressionist frame” such as we know from his early portraits and other works.

Ultimately, however, Zhang Xiaogang found that themes of life and death could be expressed without the expressionist vocabulary. At the 22nd

Biennial in Sao Paulo in 1994 he presented paintings of families symbolizing the connection of contemporary Chinese society with the past – both by blood and spiritual kinship. The success of this as well as of other exhibition projects asserted Zhang Xiaogang’s position as the foremost contemporary Chinese artist. Zhang Xiaogang has never ceased to explore the human mind and soul. His instrument of choice is a Surrealist technique combined with Pop Art simplification. The series Bloodline: The Big Family has become an iconic aesthetic expression of the spirit of its times.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1989 - 2014

2014

ZHANG XIAOGANG MEMBER+ING, Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, South Korea

2013Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář s.r.o., Smetanovo nábřeží 334/4, Praha 1 – Staré Město, IČ 27145948 DIČ CZ27145948 zastoupená jednatelem Zdeňkem


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Zhang Xiaogang, Pace Gallery, New York, USA

2012

Beijing Voice – Zhang Xiaogang, The Beijing Pace Gallery, Beijing, China

2010

16:9, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

2009

The Records, The Beijing Pace Gallery, Beijing, China

Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the Soul, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia

2008

Revision, Pace Gallery, New York, USA

2007

Zhang Xiaogang, Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere, Finland

2006

Home – Zhang Xiaogang, Beijing Municipal House, China

2004

Umbilical Cord of History – Paintings by Zhang Xiaogang 1989–2004, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, China

2000

Zhang Xiaogang 2000, Max Protetch Gallery, New York, USA



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Les Camarades / Comrades, Galerie de France, Paris, France

1997

Bloodline: The Big Family, CAFAM, Beijing, China

1989

Lost Dreams, Gallery of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing, China

Selected Group Exhibitions 2000 - 2013

2013

Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu, China / Arsenale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

2012

Face: A Survey of Chinese Portraiture, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China

2011

Future Pass: From Asia to the World (54th Venice Biennale), Fondazione Claudio Buziol / Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice, Italy

Surreal versus Surrealism in Contemporary Art, IVAM, Valencia, Spain

2010

Reshaping History – New Chinese Art 2000–2009, Beijing / Shanghai / Canton, ChinaBehind the Mask, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, England



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A Gift to Marco Polo, Venice International University, Venice, Italy

2008

Half-life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art From The Logan Collection, SFMOMA – The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA

Writing on the Wall: Chinese New Realism and Avant-Garde of the 1980s and 1990s, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands

Chinese Painting: Zhang Xiaogang, Fang Lijun, Feng Mengbo, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic

2007

New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art, UCCA, Beijing, China

Black, White, Gray – A Conscious Cultural Stance, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

2006

The Blossoming of Realism – Oil Painting from Mainland China Since 1978, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei

Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art, China Institute, New York, USA

2005

Plato and His Seven Spirits, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China

Always to the Front – Chinese Contemporary Art, Kandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei



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China, the Body Everywhere? Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseilles, France

2003

Open Sky – Contemporary Art Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art Duolun, Shanghai, China

The East Daybreak: 100 years of Chinese Painting, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, France

2002

Image is Power, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China

2001

Dream – 2001 Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibition, The Red Mansion Gallery, London, U. K.

2000

Passe-Murailles. Nouvelles scenes de l’art contemporain chinois (Contemporary Art of China], Le Musée de Picardie, Amiens, France



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zdeneksklenar.cz€¦ · Web viewSalvátorská 6, Praha 1 – Staré Město Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář s.r.o., Smetanovo nábřeží 334/4, Praha 1 – Staré Město, IČ 27145948