Zhang Dali
Zhang Dali is an artist based in Beijing.
Zhang trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Design, where he graduated in 1987. After his studies, he moved to Yuanmingyuan as a freelance artist and started to show his works in independent exhibitions. He spent the years 1990–1995 in Italy, where he came into contact with graffiti art. He was the only graffiti artist in Beijing throughout the 1990s. His works cross a multitude of techniques including painting, sculpture, photography, and installations. In the four decades of his career his works were shown in more than 300 exhibitions all over the world.
Biography
From 1995 to 1998 he spray-painted over 2000 giant profiles of his own bald head on buildings throughout Beijing, placing the images alongside chāi characters painted by the city authorities to indicate that a building is scheduled for demolition. The appearance of these images became the subject of media debate in Beijing in 1998.He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, International Center for Photography in New York City, Les Rencontres d'Arles festival in France, 18Gallery in Shanghai, Magda Danysz Gallery in Paris, Courtyard Gallery in Beijing, Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, the 2006 Gwangju Biennale in Korea and Pékin Fine Arts in Beijing. He is represented by Pékin Fine Arts in Beijing, Kiang Gallery in Atlanta, Klein Sun Gallery in New York City and Base Gallery in Tokyo.
In more recent years, his works were shown in large retrospective exhibitions such as: "From Reality to Extreme Reality" at the in Wuhan, "Body and Soul" at Beelden aan Zee in The Hague, "Meta-morphosis" at Palazzo Fava in Bologna.
Main works
Human World Red, Black, and White Series
These paintings in red, black and white are executed with oil colors, typical of western art, but on vertical paper with the dimensions and shapes, typical of Chinese traditional scroll painting. The subject is figurative, precise elements can be recognized, but at the same time not realistic. It seems like the representation of a dream, of a spiritual aspiration, of harmony between the natural and human worlds. The well-defined lines and the choice of colors refer to graphic art, which was also an essential part of Zhang's curriculum at the academy.This series of oil on paper paintings are representative of Zhang Dali's last university years and of his search for contamination between eastern and western art. Zhang Dali has already decided that he wants to be a “contemporary artist” and not a Chinese traditional painting artist. The education he received at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Beijing includes the study of European and Chinese classic art, and the study of the most influential movements of western art in the twentieth century, from Bauhaus to Pop Art.
" Formally, I have been deeply influenced by Wu Guanzhong. I was shocked the first time I saw Wu’s paintings, he used red to paint green trees. We were all shocked and thought he was colorblind. We told him the tree was green and he replied: “The tree is green, but can’t we paint it with other colors? You should paint with the color that expresses your inner most feelings.” It was then that I realized that the portrayal of natural setting landscapes and objects didn’t have to correspond to their actual form but could refer to my inner emotions. "
Zhang Dali in conversation for Asia Art Archive, Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980 to 1990, 2000
Dialogue and Demolition
Zhang Dali's encounter with graffiti first occurred in Europe. From 1989 to 1995, while he was living in Bologna, graffiti art presented itself as a means of dialogue between the artist and the people moving in the urban landscape. His first graffiti were painted in Bologna, and other European cities: Vienna, Ljubljana, Berlin. After returning to China in 1995, he witnessed the demolition of old alleys and neighborhoods, the forced relocation of the inhabitants and the propaganda to convince the citizens that “modernization” is good and necessary. He then started to wander the streets by night, on his bicycle with a spray can, leaving on the walls condemned to demolition a head profile and his signature AK-47 and 18K.In a project that will last a decade, Zhang Dali not only establishes a dialogue with the city's inhabitants, he also asks questions about the legitimacy of modernization, about the costs for the historical and cultural heritage, and the price of physical and psychological suffering. His graffiti were the spark which became a great conflagration in the public debate on the significance, modes and finality of urban modernization. With his graffiti, Zhang Dali turned into a public intellectual renown in China and all over the world.
" Urban expansion and its ambiguous spread fill us with excitement, unease and disquiet. Each and every corner of the city is a chaotic mess. Mounds of garbage are piling up and people eat, shit and sleep amongst the refuse. Children look for toys in the debris. River water runs ink black and stinks like hell, while plastic bags hang from tree branches and play catch on the grass, nodding and waving in the breeze like severed heads and hands. Men in pressing business suits enter the main gates of fancy hotels, while rivers of filth run from the hotels’ rear. "
Zhang Dali, Demolition – Continuing Dialogue, February 1998 in Zhang Dali, 2015
AK-47
AK-47 is the name of an automatic rifle designed by Michail Kalashnikov, from whose name comes the abbreviation of AK and was produced for the first time in the Soviet Union in 1947. All over the world, the name AK-47 has become a symbol of wars, insurrections and gang criminality. Zhang Dali started to use this tag during the nineties in his graffiti as a synonym of the violence permeating the fast urbanization process.From the year 2000, he started a series of portraits emerging from the chromatic contrast of "AK-47"s' shades. The paintings are acrylic on vinyl, a material widely used for advertisement boards, a feature becoming an integral part of the Beijing’s urban landscape in those years. The faces are copied from portrait photos Zhang Dali found in a pile of abandoned photo studio archives, sold in bulk at the flea market. The acronym is not painted on the faces, but it is used to portray the faces themselves: violence is not “on” people, it is the very material with which people are made of, not a washable coating, but integral part and connecting tissue of their existence.
Slogan
This is a series of portraits emerging from the repetition and color shade contrast of Chinese characters, similar to the "AK-47", but now belonging to the slogans. In the year preceding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the capital was invaded by gigantic banners and boards of government propaganda slogans. Even though this feature has always been a part of Chinese urban and rural landscapes, so much so to become invisible to the passer-by eyes, in 2008 their presence was so ubiquitous to make Zhang Dali ponder on their meaning and on the subtle message implanted in people's head." In 2000 I started the series AK-47. At the time I thought I was expressing the violence to which people are subjected to in society because of inequality. The Slogan series is a continuation of AK-47, and it is also the result of my observation of our own surrounding society. Our era is full of dramatic events and fast changes, in the main avenues and narrow alleys slogans are pervasive and ever changing. These slogans are standard sentences taken from government documents that have come to dominate our public space. Their aim is to educate us, tell us how we must behave just like a parent talking to an elementary school child – in the same way the parents of the People lecture their immature children. "
Zhang Dali, Slogan Artist’s Statement, 2008
Chinese Offspring
Zhang Dali's research on human bodies as a collective depository of an era continues in this series of sculptures, cast in fiberglass from migrant workers. From 2004 to 2010, he has reproduced the bodies of farmers coming into the city in search of work; they became the document of both a specific period in the history of urbanization and a migration of unimaginable proportion. From the first exhibitions, the sculptures were hung upside down, to express the absence of control these people have on their lives. The name Chinese Offspring demands us to reflect on the present condition of a People who had lost the values of the wise men and heroes of the past, a People reduced to a sub-human state, cogs in a machine on which they have no control on, lacking ideals and without a purpose that goes beyond daily subsistence.A Second History
A Second History was created in a seven-year span, from 2004 to 2011. Zhang Dali poses questions about the influence of new technologies on the visual mass culture and as a form of exercised power. The research on the history of image manipulation takes him to collecting thousands of illustrated volumes, magazines, and newspapers from the years 1950s to 1980s. He had access to the archives of some of the most known state publication houses, where he compared negative films and images published in those years.This work consists of the archive created by Zhang Dali after seven years of researching and cataloging. It is made of 133 panels, each comparing images as published with different manipulations and/or their original negative. Image manipulation was born with photography itself. All over the world images are manipulated, in China such practices have been particularly pervasive since the foundation of the People's Republic and is exposed in this work in its political and aesthetical significance.