Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the Soul

Exhibition Dates: March 28— June 28, 2009

Venue: Queensland Gallery of Modern Art

Standley Place South Bank Brisbane Queensland
Zhang Xiaogang is one of the foremost artists of the Chinese Avant-garde. Best known for his evocative ‘Bloodlines: The big family’ paintings of the 1990s, his deeply personal practice explores the volatile history of China’s recent past.

Chinese people have experienced too much change, which dramatically influences people internally. I say this from my experience, because I have lived through three completely different time periods in China in a short amount of time. (Zhang Xiaogang)

Zhang’s development as an artist runs parallel to the growth of contemporary Chinese art, from its emergence in the early 1980s to its international renown today. ‘Shadows in the Soul’ traces the evolution of Zhang’s unique style and compelling visual iconography, which poetically convey psychological states. Major series featured in the exhibition are his portrait-based ‘Bloodlines: The big family’, the dreamlike ‘Amnesia and memory’, his recent photographic and diaristic series ‘Describe’, and ‘In-Out’, which focuses on objects and scenes in which a human presence is implied rather than represented.
‘Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the Soul’ is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Australia, and features three decades of his practice, and begins with two groups of early sketches, shown here for the first time. Highlighting Zhang Xiaogang’s creative use of a range of media — from painting, drawing and photography to, more recently, sculptures in bronze — these works are drawn from the artist’s personal collection, with key inclusions from the Queensland Art Gallery’s Collection and private collections in Sydney, Beijing and New York. 
(text source: Queensland Gallery website)

Zhang Xiaogang working before the opening...




Interview with the artist














Zhang Xiaogang lecture






















Works realized in 2008





Sketches





Photograph of the artist, curator and other friends...





Zhang Xiaogang and curator





ABC channel interview