张晓刚 1999年作 大家庭

款识：1999. Zhang Xiaogang （右下）

“I am more concerned with personal memories. I believe that large memories are accumulated from small memories and that is why I chose to approach my work from a familial angle. Families are basic units of little memories but they contain the memories of the entire nation and its people.”
— Zhang Xiaogang
 
Triggered by the discovery of his own family photos, Zhang started his Bloodline series inspired by the personal history and associated emotions they encapsulate: ‘So many things are embodied in history that we have neglected in the past. When I looked at the family photo, I saw my parents in their youth which contrasted with ours, and I was deeply moved.’i 

 

Zhang’s portraits are a cultural product of a specific era, symbolic of its time. In contrast to his peers such as Fang Lijun or Wang Guangyi, Zhang Xiaogang diverges away from Social Realism depictions in portraiture, instead creating solemn characters that share the same large, watery eyes, pale skin, only differing slightly in hairstyles. Their individuality is almost indiscernible, suppressed under social conformity, each wearing a similarly restrained, stoic expression; their stifled emotions only conveyed delicately through subtle variations. In works such as Big Family, Zhang brings together ideas of personal heritage, collective history and cultural inheritance, crystallising snippets of the past onto the canvas, creating works that reflect on the social undertones of a bygone era that can resonate with the viewer emotionally and psychologically.

 

i Zhang Xiaogang, quoted in M Plus Museum Hong Kong, ‘Zhang Xiaogang: Bloodlines and Family’, 28 November 2018, online


来源:
伦敦，Chinese Contemporary 画廊
现藏者于2006年购自上述来源

油彩 画布

作者简介:
Relying on memory and inspired by family portraits from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Zhang Xiaogang creates surreal, subtle artworks that explore the notion of identity in relation to the Chinese culture of collectivism. Using a muted, greyscale palette, Xiaogang repeatedly depicts a series of unnervingly similar figures, often dressed in identical *** suits, to create an endless genealogy of imagined forebears and progenitors. Their somber, melancholy gazes are interrupted only by thin red bloodlines intimating familial links as well as occasional pale splotches of color resembling birthmarks.
Xiaogang investigates how to express individual histories within the strict confines of a formula. His sitters, while appearing muted and compliant, are given physical exaggerations: oversized heads, tiny hands and long noses. These distortions imply stifled emotions and give a complex psychological dimension to the artist's work.

创作年代:
1999年作