Dec
27
Selected Zhang Dali Artworks at Saatchi-gallery
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InventaTechnologies asked:
Zhang Dali is known for Demolitions, photographs of his graffiti work, as AK47, in which he made graffiti profiles on buildings that were in the process of being demolished, on walls, bridges and underpasses, all over Beijing. Zhang Dali’s pairs manipulated photographs from Mao-era China, with unaltered images from original negatives, showing how photography was used as a propaganda tool, exemplify the use of artistic censorship for political motives.
Biography of Zhang Dali
1963 Born in Harbin, China
1987 Graduated from National Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Beijing
Lives and works in Beijing.
Zhang Dali, also known as AK-47 and 18K, makes art that questions the official face of contemporary Chinese society through graffiti, sculpture and installation. As a young man, Zhang was a successful painter in a more traditional and acceptable way – abstract canvases and playful interactions with the characters of the Chinese language – however, he grew despondent with the lack of impact his work had in galleries and turned to graffiti in order to make his art more visible. Zhang’s best known project is ‘Dialogue’ in which he sprays stylised outlines of heads on condemned buildings around Beijing. This tagging highlights the swiftness with which the past is being turned to rubble in an attempt to transform the city into a modern metropolis at the sacrifice of almost all traditional architecture.
Zhang Dali’s intention throughout his body of work is to call attention to the changes taking place in Chinese society primarily due to the destruction of long standing communities. He wants to enter into a dialogue with his compatriots whom he sees as becoming increasingly estranged as the drive towards modernisation continues. His early graffiti work can still be seen all over the Chinese capital. His signature outline of a human head was found, among other places, on traditional courtyard houses marked for demolition. The artist called this graffiti work “Dialogue” and documented it by photography.
Zhang Dali’s work was shown in the 2002 Guangzhou Triennial, ARCO 2002, and Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China ,China Art Now (Singapore Art Museum), Contemporary Chinese Photography (Finland Museum of Photography, Helsinki), Hot Pot (Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo), Beijing in London (ICA), and **** Off (Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai). His work will be included in the fall at the Gwangiu Biennial, S. Korea and Duke University, as well as Kiang Gallery in Atlanta.
CONCLUSION
Zhang Dali, his sculptures are living taxonomy, a human version of insect samples (”biao ben”) except the specimens are live people. It is a documentation of the species at a specific moment in history.Zhang Dali wanted to bring these people and their hard, bitter lives to the attention of others.
Find More about Zhang Dali Paintings and Exhibitions at Saatchi-Gallery
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_dali.htm
LAGANA
Zhang Dali is known for Demolitions, photographs of his graffiti work, as AK47, in which he made graffiti profiles on buildings that were in the process of being demolished, on walls, bridges and underpasses, all over Beijing. Zhang Dali’s pairs manipulated photographs from Mao-era China, with unaltered images from original negatives, showing how photography was used as a propaganda tool, exemplify the use of artistic censorship for political motives.
Biography of Zhang Dali
1963 Born in Harbin, China
1987 Graduated from National Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Beijing
Lives and works in Beijing.
Zhang Dali, also known as AK-47 and 18K, makes art that questions the official face of contemporary Chinese society through graffiti, sculpture and installation. As a young man, Zhang was a successful painter in a more traditional and acceptable way – abstract canvases and playful interactions with the characters of the Chinese language – however, he grew despondent with the lack of impact his work had in galleries and turned to graffiti in order to make his art more visible. Zhang’s best known project is ‘Dialogue’ in which he sprays stylised outlines of heads on condemned buildings around Beijing. This tagging highlights the swiftness with which the past is being turned to rubble in an attempt to transform the city into a modern metropolis at the sacrifice of almost all traditional architecture.
Zhang Dali’s intention throughout his body of work is to call attention to the changes taking place in Chinese society primarily due to the destruction of long standing communities. He wants to enter into a dialogue with his compatriots whom he sees as becoming increasingly estranged as the drive towards modernisation continues. His early graffiti work can still be seen all over the Chinese capital. His signature outline of a human head was found, among other places, on traditional courtyard houses marked for demolition. The artist called this graffiti work “Dialogue” and documented it by photography.
Zhang Dali’s work was shown in the 2002 Guangzhou Triennial, ARCO 2002, and Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China ,China Art Now (Singapore Art Museum), Contemporary Chinese Photography (Finland Museum of Photography, Helsinki), Hot Pot (Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo), Beijing in London (ICA), and **** Off (Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai). His work will be included in the fall at the Gwangiu Biennial, S. Korea and Duke University, as well as Kiang Gallery in Atlanta.
CONCLUSION
Zhang Dali, his sculptures are living taxonomy, a human version of insect samples (”biao ben”) except the specimens are live people. It is a documentation of the species at a specific moment in history.Zhang Dali wanted to bring these people and their hard, bitter lives to the attention of others.
Find More about Zhang Dali Paintings and Exhibitions at Saatchi-Gallery
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_dali.htm
LAGANA
May
22
Zhang Dali Chinese Artists and His Paintings
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Saatchi-gallery asked:
Zhang Dali was born on 1963 and Born in Harbin, China. Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.
According to the artist, immigrant workers who have traveled from the rural areas all over China to earn a living in construction sites in Chinese cities, are the most important members of the Chinese race, who are shaping our physical reality. Yet, they are the faceless crowd who live at the bottom of our society. To cast them in resin is a way to recognize their existence and contribution as well as to capture a fast-changing point of time in the Chinese society. From 2003 to 2005, Zhang has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.You wouldn’t notice them in a Western city because the simple drawings would be quickly sprayed over with graffiti done by thousands of other lay abouts, vandals,artists and political groups.
But Beijing has almost no graffiti and the heads compete for space only with notices telling you not to park in front of gates or dump garbage, advertisements for venereal disease remedies and the ubiquitous Chinese character - chai, indicating that the building is about to be demolished. In fact, many of 18K’s tags are intentionally placed right next to “chai” characters. Not only is graffiti painted onto walls that will soon be rubble unlikely to stir the police into action, 18K also has artistic reasons for associating his heads with condemned structures: the work is an attempt to engage in a dialogue with Beijing, a city where buildings come down faster than they did in wartime Berlin and London.In the late 1980s, 18K was the first artist to move to the village near Yuanmingyuan that later became a thriving colony of artists and bohemians until it was closed by Beijing authorities in the early 1990s. In 1988, 18K was one of several artists featured in independent filmmaker Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing (Liulang Beijin).
Conclusions:
Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies.
What to Do Next…
If you want any information about Zhang Dali or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_dali.htm
BLISH
Zhang Dali was born on 1963 and Born in Harbin, China. Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.
According to the artist, immigrant workers who have traveled from the rural areas all over China to earn a living in construction sites in Chinese cities, are the most important members of the Chinese race, who are shaping our physical reality. Yet, they are the faceless crowd who live at the bottom of our society. To cast them in resin is a way to recognize their existence and contribution as well as to capture a fast-changing point of time in the Chinese society. From 2003 to 2005, Zhang has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.You wouldn’t notice them in a Western city because the simple drawings would be quickly sprayed over with graffiti done by thousands of other lay abouts, vandals,artists and political groups.
But Beijing has almost no graffiti and the heads compete for space only with notices telling you not to park in front of gates or dump garbage, advertisements for venereal disease remedies and the ubiquitous Chinese character - chai, indicating that the building is about to be demolished. In fact, many of 18K’s tags are intentionally placed right next to “chai” characters. Not only is graffiti painted onto walls that will soon be rubble unlikely to stir the police into action, 18K also has artistic reasons for associating his heads with condemned structures: the work is an attempt to engage in a dialogue with Beijing, a city where buildings come down faster than they did in wartime Berlin and London.In the late 1980s, 18K was the first artist to move to the village near Yuanmingyuan that later became a thriving colony of artists and bohemians until it was closed by Beijing authorities in the early 1990s. In 1988, 18K was one of several artists featured in independent filmmaker Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing (Liulang Beijin).
Conclusions:
Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies.
What to Do Next…
If you want any information about Zhang Dali or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_dali.htm
BLISH
Mar
2
Zhang Dali Paintings and Exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery
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Saatchi-gallery asked:
Zhang Dali’s intention throughout his body of work is to call attention to the changes taking place in Chinese society primarily due to the destruction of long standing communities. He wants to enter into a dialogue with his compatriots whom he sees as becoming increasingly estranged as the drive towards modernisation continues. His early graffiti work can still be seen all over the Chinese capital. His signature outline of a human head was found, among other places, on traditional courtyard houses marked for demolition. The artist called this graffiti work “Dialogue” and documented it by photography.According to the artist, immigrant workers who have traveled from the rural areas all over China to earn a living in construction sites in Chinese cities, are the most important members of the Chinese race, who are shaping our physical reality. Yet, they are the faceless crowd who live at the bottom of our society. To cast them in resin is a way to recognize their existence and contribution as well as to capture a fast-changing point of time in the Chinese society. From 2003 to 2005, Zhang has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.
Zhang Dali went on to make portraits of migrant workers’ faces and resin casts of their heads or entire bodies. Having a studio on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhang Dali became acquainted with a community of migrant workers who lives nearby. Migrant workers have emerged as a product of the urbanization and growth of the main Chinese cities. Mobility has come with reform and this is not always an easy choice. The cities have developed into places of wealth and opportunity, thus drawing all sorts of people in search of better lives. However with this growth of the cities and the introduction of so much from the West: architecture, food, fashion, social manners, etc. has come also great uncertainty. For the migrant worker uncertainty is one of the key elements of their existence. Zhang Dali wanted to bring these people and their hard, bitter lives to the attention of others, and did so by creating head and body casts of volunteers from among these people as well as painting their portraits in his AK-47 series.The presentation of the body casts is vital to transmitting the artist’s message. They are shown hanging upside down from ropes tied around their ankles. The imagery is shocking: hanging like carcasses of meat, in mid-air, in limbo. The artist uses the Chinese “dao xuan” to express being upside down in limbo without any inner strength to turn their bodies. These works capture the spirit, or lack thereof, of these workers. For Zhang Dali, his sculptures are living taxonomy, a human version of insect samples (”biao ben”) except the specimens are live people. It is a documentation of the species at a specific moment in history.
SHEEHAN
Zhang Dali’s intention throughout his body of work is to call attention to the changes taking place in Chinese society primarily due to the destruction of long standing communities. He wants to enter into a dialogue with his compatriots whom he sees as becoming increasingly estranged as the drive towards modernisation continues. His early graffiti work can still be seen all over the Chinese capital. His signature outline of a human head was found, among other places, on traditional courtyard houses marked for demolition. The artist called this graffiti work “Dialogue” and documented it by photography.According to the artist, immigrant workers who have traveled from the rural areas all over China to earn a living in construction sites in Chinese cities, are the most important members of the Chinese race, who are shaping our physical reality. Yet, they are the faceless crowd who live at the bottom of our society. To cast them in resin is a way to recognize their existence and contribution as well as to capture a fast-changing point of time in the Chinese society. From 2003 to 2005, Zhang has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.
Zhang Dali went on to make portraits of migrant workers’ faces and resin casts of their heads or entire bodies. Having a studio on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhang Dali became acquainted with a community of migrant workers who lives nearby. Migrant workers have emerged as a product of the urbanization and growth of the main Chinese cities. Mobility has come with reform and this is not always an easy choice. The cities have developed into places of wealth and opportunity, thus drawing all sorts of people in search of better lives. However with this growth of the cities and the introduction of so much from the West: architecture, food, fashion, social manners, etc. has come also great uncertainty. For the migrant worker uncertainty is one of the key elements of their existence. Zhang Dali wanted to bring these people and their hard, bitter lives to the attention of others, and did so by creating head and body casts of volunteers from among these people as well as painting their portraits in his AK-47 series.The presentation of the body casts is vital to transmitting the artist’s message. They are shown hanging upside down from ropes tied around their ankles. The imagery is shocking: hanging like carcasses of meat, in mid-air, in limbo. The artist uses the Chinese “dao xuan” to express being upside down in limbo without any inner strength to turn their bodies. These works capture the spirit, or lack thereof, of these workers. For Zhang Dali, his sculptures are living taxonomy, a human version of insect samples (”biao ben”) except the specimens are live people. It is a documentation of the species at a specific moment in history.
SHEEHAN
Jan
19
Zhang Dali, Zhang Dali Chinese Artist, Artist Zhang Dali, Zhang Dali Exhibitions, Zhang Dali Painting’s at Saatchi Gallery, Zhang Dali London Contemp
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Saatchi-gallery asked:
Zhang Dali was born on 1963 and Born in Harbin, China. Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.
The scrawled profiles of a human head are the work of 18K (aka AK47) - the artist formerly known as Zhang Dali. You wouldn’t notice them in a Western city because the simple drawings would be quickly sprayed over with graffiti done by thousands of other lay abouts, vandals, artists and political groups.18K was born in Heilongjiang 36 years ago and came to Beijing after middle school to attend the prestigious Central Academy of Art and Design. He majored in traditional Chinese ink-and-brush painting but soon began producing abstract works and experimenting with different materials. In the late 1980s, 18K was the first artist to move to the village near Yuanmingyuan that later became a thriving colony of artists and bohemians until it was closed by Beijing authorities in the early 1990s. In 1988, 18K was one of several artists featured in independent filmmaker Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing (Liulang Beijin)
In fact, many of 18K’s tags are intentionally placed right next to “chai” characters. Not only is graffiti painted onto walls that will soon be rubble unlikely to stir the police into action, 18K also has artistic reasons for associating his heads with condemned structures: the work is an attempt to engage in a dialogue with Beijing, a city where buildings come down faster than they did in wartime Berlin and London. Like many young people involved in the arts, 18K left Beijing in 1989. He went to Italy where he spent six years living in different cities and working as an artist. On his return to Beijing in 1993 he conceived of his long running graffiti project which he entitles Dialogue because the intention is that the graffiti along with photographs and articles that document and criticize it will together comprise a dialogue about the changing face of Beijing
Selected EXHIBITIONS-
2006
• A Second History curated by Wu Hung, Walsh Gallery, Chicago
2005
• Sublimation curated by Wu Hung, Beijing Commune, China
2004
• Chinese Contemporary Gallery, London
2003
• Galleria Gariboldi, Milan, Italy
2002
• Base Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Chinese Contemporary Gallery, London
Conclusions:
Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies.
What to Do Next…
If you want any information about Zhang Huan or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_dali.htm
ARMITAGE
Zhang Dali was born on 1963 and Born in Harbin, China. Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.
The scrawled profiles of a human head are the work of 18K (aka AK47) - the artist formerly known as Zhang Dali. You wouldn’t notice them in a Western city because the simple drawings would be quickly sprayed over with graffiti done by thousands of other lay abouts, vandals, artists and political groups.18K was born in Heilongjiang 36 years ago and came to Beijing after middle school to attend the prestigious Central Academy of Art and Design. He majored in traditional Chinese ink-and-brush painting but soon began producing abstract works and experimenting with different materials. In the late 1980s, 18K was the first artist to move to the village near Yuanmingyuan that later became a thriving colony of artists and bohemians until it was closed by Beijing authorities in the early 1990s. In 1988, 18K was one of several artists featured in independent filmmaker Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing (Liulang Beijin)
In fact, many of 18K’s tags are intentionally placed right next to “chai” characters. Not only is graffiti painted onto walls that will soon be rubble unlikely to stir the police into action, 18K also has artistic reasons for associating his heads with condemned structures: the work is an attempt to engage in a dialogue with Beijing, a city where buildings come down faster than they did in wartime Berlin and London. Like many young people involved in the arts, 18K left Beijing in 1989. He went to Italy where he spent six years living in different cities and working as an artist. On his return to Beijing in 1993 he conceived of his long running graffiti project which he entitles Dialogue because the intention is that the graffiti along with photographs and articles that document and criticize it will together comprise a dialogue about the changing face of Beijing
Selected EXHIBITIONS-
2006
• A Second History curated by Wu Hung, Walsh Gallery, Chicago
2005
• Sublimation curated by Wu Hung, Beijing Commune, China
2004
• Chinese Contemporary Gallery, London
2003
• Galleria Gariboldi, Milan, Italy
2002
• Base Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Chinese Contemporary Gallery, London
Conclusions:
Zhang Dali has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist’s signature and the work’s title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies.
What to Do Next…
If you want any information about Zhang Huan or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_dali.htm
ARMITAGE