Oil on canvas

53.2×37.9 cm. 21×14 7/8 in.

Signed in English and dated on bottom left
PROVENANCE
China Today Gallery, Brussels
Acquired directly by present private European collector from the above

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by China Today Gallery, Brussels and signed by the artist

A Solipsistic Gaze at Life
The Art and Era of Zhang Xiaogang

"Once we returned to the coast and I stared at the dancing sea spray, falling into thought: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?"
—In Search of That Existence by Zhang Xiaogang,1986

Zhang Xiaogang has been described by art critic Li Xianting "an artist who epitomizes Chinese contemporary art," and his artistic career serves as a testament to the transformation of contemporary art in China over a 30-year period, showcasing a creative journey imbued with individual life considerations and historical reflection.

Zhang Xiaogang was born in Kunming, Yunnan Province in 1958 and grew up during the decade-long Cultural Revolution. In 1982, he was a student in the first graduating class from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, where during his time as a student Zhang travelled to Tibet, adopted experimental expressionist brushwork and painted for the national minority audience there. The artist graduated in the 1980s, just as China was embracing reform and opening up to the wider world. At that time Western artistic ideas flooded into the country and had a major impact on Zhang's creative thinking, leading him to create in quick succession the expressive interest and charm of the Grassland Series works, the self-analysis of the Abyss Series and the Surrealism of the Lost Dream Series. With the expansion of the market for art in the 1990s, Zhang Xiaogang also produced his most important art work the Big Family Series. He was also a big hit at the Sao Paulo and Venice biennials, which ensured he quickly developed a global reputation. Zhang's works have been collected by several renowned international art institutions, including the Tate Modern in London, Centre National D'art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou (Pompidou Center) in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and M+ Museum in Hong Kong, as well as important private art collectors and groups around the world.

As part of the upcoming auction, we are delighted to present three outstanding paintings by Zhang Xiaogang; from Still Life (Lot77) created in 1978, the year he entered Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, to Portrait of Ma Xiangsheng (Lot75) in 1982, a painting of a fellow student imbued with early Grassland Series expressionist technique and The Son (Lot76) created in 2005 as an extension of the internationally renowned Big Family series. These three paintings cover a key 30-year period in the artist's career, while also reflecting how the young Zhang incrementally developed over time, evolving from China to the wider world, while honestly showcasing thought-provoking ideas on the times in which he lives and his rich life experience.

Building up Artistic Potential at Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts

In March 1978, China reinstated the Nationwide Unified Examination for Admissions to General Universities and Colleges, and unexpectedly Zhang Xiaogang was "the only of 5000 students from Yunnan to successfully enroll at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts majoring in oil painting," which marked the beginning of his academic art career. Still Life, completed in February 1978, has rarely been seen at auction and is an invaluable early work, as well as a testament to Zhang Xiaogang's impressive sketching skills. In the painting we see glass vessels of different heights, fruit and an upright floral pattern backdrop. The large triangle structure made up of the items depicted, the square background and drawing paper highlight a smooth and harmonious rhythm as well as the artist's meticulous attention to detail.

Appealing Creativity, National Customs Infused with Unique Style

In 1982, Zhang Xiaogang graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and his graduation piece Grassland Series is considered his earliest representative series of works. It showcases how, as a student in the oil painting department, he came into contact with the works of Western artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Jean-François Millet etc. and gradually experimented with the incorporation of Western oil painting style in his own paintings.

One of Zhang Xiaogang's fellow oil painting students, Ma Xiangsheng was particularly eye-catching. As a Muslim, he possessed an innate national disposition and also become an invaluable subject in Zhang's paintings. Completed in 1982, Portrait of Ma Xiangsheng is replete with the expressive feel of the Grassland Series. In the painting Ma wears a turban, showcasing his upholding of faith and observance. He is also dressed in a jacket decorated with Muslim embroidery over a shirt and jumper often worn by Chinese men, an example of cultural interaction. In addition, the background to the painting is a bright orange hue, depicting geometric patterns that appear to be a mountain range, camels and homes, which highlight the distinctive faith and ethic image of the main figure. The representational realism of the main figure's face almost bring him to life, with the decorative abstract background incorporating the stylistic appeal of Henri Mattise's Fauvist School, which makes the image even more distinctive and dashing.

Birth and Intellectual Inquiry in the Bloodline Series

In 1993, Zhang Xiaogang returned to Kunming where he looked through his parent's photo album, and viewing old photographs from another era awoke in the artist childhood memories. He also came to realize that at that time: "the semiotics of what should have been private family photographs had been standardized and made ideological." This in turn provided an access point detailing the relationship between the individual and the collective and led directly to the official launch of the Big Family work as part of the Bloodline Series in 1993.

Light Perception and Moving Images:
Reconstructing the Visual Space of Portraiture

Completed in 2005, The Son is a mature example of work from the Bloodline series. The iconic flat painting method, the hazy and nostalgic virtual/real smudging, grey tones of standardized photographs, and the magnified images in pop art and advertising painting can all be seen in this piece. However, where this painting departs from the past is the central figure appears to deliberately create an image that differs from the earlier family photographs. For example, the eyes of the subject do not look directly at the audience and his cheeks are not turned toward the camera. Moreover, speckles of light and blood lines are replaced by a "light band" which gradually flows across the boy's face, in a way that is reminiscent of the half side light and shade on the illuminated faces that appear in British artist Lucian Freud's self-portraits and a gaze that speaks to a desire to speak not acted upon. Art critic Huang Zhuan points to a scenario in which: "a sense of moment akin to movie shot replaces the sense of stability that imbues photographic images." After 2000, Zhang started to experiment with interpreting figures through the relationship between light, angles and background in film. Indeed, the aesthetic appeal, mysterious narrative style, interpretations of complex human nature and viewing angles in such black and white movies as Ernst Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Luis Buñuel's An Andalusian Dog, and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, were all captured by Zhang Xiaogang and incorporated into his paintings. The ambiguity created by a shallow focal length camera shot intensifies the possibility of turmoil and change. When compared to the indifference of a family photo, the gaze and perception of "light" in The Son showcases greater spatial extension and alludes to a search for direction.

The Featured Perspective of Being Independently Present

Despite the fact that based on its name the work appears to echo expressions of blood relations seen in the Big Family, in terms of imagery and expressiveness, the piece represents a marked departure from the upright nature of family photographs. For example, the "absence" of parents deepens the idea that the son is independently "present." In addition, the teen's unconscious revealing of his buck teeth also adds a sense of ignorance and innocence, while the slightly raised chin speaks to longing and desire.

Although the work is expressed against a torrent of history and the collective, the directional choice of "light" by individual fate is generally a process that involves "the individual casting off the collective and restoring self-consciousness". The fact the figure is wearing a Chinese style tunic suit represents a model of social integration and identity, but in terms of the familial identity of "son" the figure is also a focus of parental aspirations "having great hopes for their offspring" and "adult males becoming soldiers." Moreover, it is precisely the establishment of this image that highlights the contradiction and conflict between internal and external images, external hopes and internal desires. The buzz-cut image of the boy coincides with the artist's own buzz-cut image in real life, placing one's own perspective into the head of a child and thereby returning to that 10-year-old boy in a Chinese suit in the 1960s and 1970s and reexamining one's identity, by looking at the past and future from a different perspective. Behind the many placid portraits, the artist's sharp discerning eyes gaze deeply back at the viewer.

Price estimate:
HKD 350,000 – 450,000
USD 44,900 – 57,700

Auction Result:
HKD: -