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Lot Essay
The pain of life does not come from without the two aspects of body and spirit. Bodily pain is manifested in illness or injury, and can be clearly perceived; the wellspring of spiritual pain, however, is often unfathomable since, in contrast to physical pain which may be clearly objectively verified, the spirit is entirely an abstract state that demands careful attention to subjective feelings. Whether one attempts to employ whatever in the way of language or scientific data, it is very difficult with either to clearly explain the nature of frustration, disappointment, anger, sadness, emptiness, despair and other psychological reactions. With respect to health, traditional Chinese medicine advises that before nourishing the mind, it must first be adjusted, since all pain actually arises in the mind. Western civilization has always relied on Christianity as a means of altering the mind, but the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's dictum that God is dead indicates that Christianity has already ceased to be the ultimate arbiter of morality in human society. Thus, if in a religious sense Zhang Xiaogang's work Dormant Head and Guardians (Lot 38) intends to create a deified personal worldview to assuage the ailments of the spirit, then Collection of Abysses (Lot 39) is rather the artist's complete exhaustion of the fantasy of faith altogether, and a turn towards a lonely inner heart monologue with self. As he once remarked, "I find it hardest to bear the unspeakable loneliness." (March 3, 1982 letter from Zhang Xiaogang to Zhou Chunya).
This Collection of Abysses ties in vaguely with the space, floating in mid-air like a scattering of collage paper clouds behind towering triangular mountains, but the table in the forefront gives the impression that one is present in the room. The blurred perspective of the lone head added to the table is reminiscent of Georgio de Chirico's Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire (fig. 1). The yellow head's eyes appear irrationally large; the round eyeballs, though not eye-catching, seem inexplicably empty, as if they have lost their focus. Meeting those eyes conveys no sense of any emotional flux; the figure's soul seems to have been scooped out. The visage's stiff mouth appears as a graphic collage cover, suggesting that language is of no avail in this environment. This not merely enhances the feeling of loneliness in this scene, but implies even more the inability to utter frustration and pain amid the Babel of voices. This expression perfectly reflects Zhang Xiaogang's emotional void in the 1980s, confronting the prospect of an uncertain life. Even in the Bloodline: Big Family Series, the figures' countenances are still ineffaceably marked by sadness, thus revealing the artist's history of deep sadness and mournfulness.
A static atmosphere pervades the entire picture, and the only interaction that occurs is between the yellow head and the match stick. The mysterious hand grasps the burning match, illuminating the vacant face lost in a reverie. The yellowish sheen infects the picture's atmosphere, lighting a once chilly space, and glowing with a hint of ineffable warmth and tranquility, and even adumbrating light and hope. Although this patch of bright imparts no riveting visual effect to the scene, but is more gentle and subtle - even if only very slightly -the ambience of intense loneliness in the picture causes the viewer to feel its psychological dynamism and vitality, which has moreover also become the glim sustaining the painter's lonely heart.
One may discern from the collage format of this work that Zhang Xiaogang was seeking at that time a visual effect beyond that of pure oil painting. More importantly though, through the overlap of his collage and hand-painted forms, he demonstrates how his picture is entirely composed of fractured forms pieced back together, thus insinuating a life lying in shards. In sharp counterpoint to the glossy flat portions hand painted in oil, the irregular and even wrinkled collage shapes are ruffled with a coarse texture - seemingly forming vestigial traces of former injury. Removing such representational elements as the head and hand, the work displays a use of materiality and a geometric arrangement that bears the stamp of Italian contemporary artist Alberto Burri (fig. 2). In addition, the primary threads Zhang Xiaogang employs in his expression of the time - in this work the black threads that appear to flow from the left down - are actual cotton thread extending ever downward towards the left side of the figure's head, and appearing to the eye as if seeking an accord with the black-painted eyebrows in order to generate a very delicate textural contrast. The planar surfaces and the three-dimensional shapes also present a pleasing illusion. Just so is the collaged red thread which, though it is pasted into the picture in small amounts and placed in an understated setting beneath the table, its bright-red warm hue nonetheless draws into the scene a living, beating vein, one which disentangles itself from this chaotic situation to slowly evolve into an indispensable symbol in the later Blood Line Series.
This Collection of Abysses ties in vaguely with the space, floating in mid-air like a scattering of collage paper clouds behind towering triangular mountains, but the table in the forefront gives the impression that one is present in the room. The blurred perspective of the lone head added to the table is reminiscent of Georgio de Chirico's Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire (fig. 1). The yellow head's eyes appear irrationally large; the round eyeballs, though not eye-catching, seem inexplicably empty, as if they have lost their focus. Meeting those eyes conveys no sense of any emotional flux; the figure's soul seems to have been scooped out. The visage's stiff mouth appears as a graphic collage cover, suggesting that language is of no avail in this environment. This not merely enhances the feeling of loneliness in this scene, but implies even more the inability to utter frustration and pain amid the Babel of voices. This expression perfectly reflects Zhang Xiaogang's emotional void in the 1980s, confronting the prospect of an uncertain life. Even in the Bloodline: Big Family Series, the figures' countenances are still ineffaceably marked by sadness, thus revealing the artist's history of deep sadness and mournfulness.
A static atmosphere pervades the entire picture, and the only interaction that occurs is between the yellow head and the match stick. The mysterious hand grasps the burning match, illuminating the vacant face lost in a reverie. The yellowish sheen infects the picture's atmosphere, lighting a once chilly space, and glowing with a hint of ineffable warmth and tranquility, and even adumbrating light and hope. Although this patch of bright imparts no riveting visual effect to the scene, but is more gentle and subtle - even if only very slightly -the ambience of intense loneliness in the picture causes the viewer to feel its psychological dynamism and vitality, which has moreover also become the glim sustaining the painter's lonely heart.
One may discern from the collage format of this work that Zhang Xiaogang was seeking at that time a visual effect beyond that of pure oil painting. More importantly though, through the overlap of his collage and hand-painted forms, he demonstrates how his picture is entirely composed of fractured forms pieced back together, thus insinuating a life lying in shards. In sharp counterpoint to the glossy flat portions hand painted in oil, the irregular and even wrinkled collage shapes are ruffled with a coarse texture - seemingly forming vestigial traces of former injury. Removing such representational elements as the head and hand, the work displays a use of materiality and a geometric arrangement that bears the stamp of Italian contemporary artist Alberto Burri (fig. 2). In addition, the primary threads Zhang Xiaogang employs in his expression of the time - in this work the black threads that appear to flow from the left down - are actual cotton thread extending ever downward towards the left side of the figure's head, and appearing to the eye as if seeking an accord with the black-painted eyebrows in order to generate a very delicate textural contrast. The planar surfaces and the three-dimensional shapes also present a pleasing illusion. Just so is the collaged red thread which, though it is pasted into the picture in small amounts and placed in an understated setting beneath the table, its bright-red warm hue nonetheless draws into the scene a living, beating vein, one which disentangles itself from this chaotic situation to slowly evolve into an indispensable symbol in the later Blood Line Series.