Author: ZHANG XIAOGANG 张晓刚

Size: 280×450cm

Signed and dated: Painted in 2002-2005

Estimate: Estimate Upon Request

Final Price: RMB 25,500,000

LITERATURE
2007 Black White Grey - A Conscious Cultural Stance / P260-261 / Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House
signed in Chinese and dated 2005
EXHIBITED
2007 Black White Grey - A Conscious Cultural Stance， Today Art Museum， Beijing

Thematically， the subject of the family is also classically Chinese. Through the Chinese tradition of portraiture， Zhang has drawn upon the classical iconography of ancestor portraiture of which every Chinese would have vague collective memory of “ancestor portraits” naturally stays within bounds of the photography studio.
The skills of realism have been used by Zhang to depict a situation that seems to be neither real nor imaginary， drawing the audience into the other reality of art. In a realm straddling reality and fantasy， the viewer is invited to linger upon the ambiguities bordering that which is public and the private， memory and forgetfulness， personal and artistic reason for Zhang’s success in the recent decade. He has reinvented a classical icon to articulate both unutterable public taboos as well as each person’s private secrets.
Zhang’s success is to have explored a sensitive area wedged in between various dichotomies， articulating secrets that long to be told but remain suppressed. Bloodline and Amnesia and Memory reflect the historical problem of the clash between family and nationhood， about confliction loyalties and public wounds still seeking resolution. The artist has exposed this dimension of history through the confines of the protagonists are held captive， fossilized as stilled faces. Each one tries to show his best side to the world as this is the memory he is leaving to posterity. Each is making an effort for memory in the future. This fixed moment is therefore a moment suspended between past and future， when each person is joined to the others for eternity. Here we find a common understanding between them that cannot be readily articulated’ it is like sharing a secret， a common wound. We are not told the contents of this wound， but the artist seems to imply that we should know anyway because we have arrived from that same history. Perhaps this is the significance of Zhang’ art for this era. He has portrayed a public iconography， and has captured the complex emotions hidden by history’s public face. As such the Bloodline imagery is recognized as a defining icon of our time.——Chang Tsong-zung