The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong.

    Curators: Petr Nedoma & Chang Tsong-zung (Hong Kong)

    2008-09-25 -- 2008-12-28 

    A triple exhibition of the recent painting of three of today'' evidently most prestigious Chinese medium generation painters, of whom primarily Zhang Xiaogang stands at the absolute peak not only in China but also within the Euro-American art world. Whilst all three ensue from a heritage of European painting tradition, their work is clearly shaped by Chinese reality and sensitivity.

    Zhang Xiaogang

    The painting of Zhang Xiaogang (* 1958), inspired by a family photograph from the time of the cultural revolution, but also by, for example, the European tradition of surrealism, examines the notion of identity in the Chinese culture of collectivism. His work focuses on the concept of "family" - concrete as well as expanded to the widest society, and Zhang''s portraits depict the unending genealogic line of imaginary forefathers and predecessors who are very similar to each other. The author also brought the concept of memory, a moment caught in the flow of time in its newest form, to the empty landscape and interiors through which the past flowed and remained but a nostalgic memory.

    Fang Lijun

    At the end of the 1980''s, Fang Lijun (* 1963), one of the leading representatives of the so-called cynical realism, predominantly recast his personal childhood experiences into figural scenes of apparently harmonic calmness, but hiding the malicious reaction to domestic political events. The start of the new millennium brings his creation from local, genre scenes so far as to a monumental, flaming pathos of tumultuous scenes somewhere in the middle of a cloud between the sky and the earth, above the billowy sea elements. The new reality of his relieved hedonism in our environment unwillingly refers to transcendent reality of baroque ceiling frescos.

    Feng Mengbo

    During the mid 1990''s, from his painting origins in the spirit of political pop, Feng Mengbo (* 1966) moved the main crux of his creation to computer-generated video sequences. The line of these works, often criticizing the cynicism of computer games and aimed at utilizing their formal procedures, recently ended in a return to painting. Their foundation is a computer-designed image structure finished in reality by classic painting. The newest series of landscapes is an exceedingly richly overlaid account of the history of Chinese painting disciplines.