Zhang Xiaogang | Comrades with Red Baby (from Bloodline series)

2006

Avant-garde Chinese artist Zhang Xiaogang has gained worldwide recognition for his Surrealist influenced work, which deals intimately with notions of memory, family, history and political power.  Born in the province of Yunnan, Zhang lived through many of the atrocities of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, including labor camps and “reeducation camps.” After the fall of the communist regime, Zhang.

Inspired by family photos from the Cultural Revolution period, as well as the European tradition of surrealism, Zhang Xiaogang’s paintings engage with the notion of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism. Basing his work around the concept of ‘family’ –immediate, extended, and societal – Xiaogang’s portraits depict an endless genealogy of imagined forebears and progenitors, each unnervingly similar and distinguished by minute difference.

Drawing from the generic quality of formal photo studio poses and greyscale palette, Xiaogang’s figures are nameless and timeless: a series of individual histories represented within the strict confines of formula. The occasional splotches of color which interrupt his images create aberrant demarcations, reminiscent of birthmarks, aged film, social stigma, or a lingering sense of the sitter’s self-assertion.

Medium: Lithograph in colours on cotton fibre paper
Size: H78.7 x W95.3cm
Signed: Yes, numbered in pencil along lower margins
Edition: 130