Author: ZHANG KAI 张凯

Size: 100×100cm

Signed and dated: Painted in 2018

Estimate: 300,000 -500,000

Final Price: RMB 470,000

EXHIBITED
2018 Gift Zhangkai Solo Exhibition Triumph Art Gallery, Beijing

NOTE
The item is held under the bonded status, for more details, please see the Notice on Auction of Bonded Lots.

Interview with Zhang Kai: Reviewing and Setting up My Own Art System (Excerpt)
LIU = Liu Jing, ZHANG = Zhang Kai
LIU: In your five solo exhibitions in 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015 and this year, the appropriation of classical works and anthropomorphic images of cats and rabbits have always been present. What is it that keeps you going back to these practices?
ZHANG: It all started with my aesthetic preferences. Initially I was quite avid about post-impressionists such as Cézanne and Van Gogh. I was young then and had no idea about schools of art. I liked them with the eye of a child, and their works beamed with graffiti-like freedom to me. With more macroscopic and in-depth understanding of art history, I began to take an interest in tracing back artistic traditions, quite an aesthetic retrospective process. Cats and rabbits have acted as my motifs for a long time. Sometimes I approach them as bystanders, and sometimes they are my own avatars, who help me steer clear of the logic of reality to attain a state of surreal self-sufficiency. It is only appropriate to express what I think with their images, whose characteristics of elegance, enigma, contradiction and independence fit well with the atmosphere I have in mind.
LIU: In your works, there are often red curtains that create a stage effect. Are you deliberately separating the image from reality?
ZHANG: The red curtain is a symbol of life. A number of series are being made simultaneously, rather than deriving works from one single theme. It is in pace with the timeline of my spiritual life, and what hide between the curtain are my thoughts and sentiments about time.