Zhang Peili

initialled in Pinyin; signed and titled in Chinese, dated 86 on the reverse, framed

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

A History of Art In Twentieth Century China, Lü Peng ed., Peking University Press, Beijing, China, 2006, p. 834; Edizioni Charta, Milan, Italy, 2010, p. 870
Zhang Peili, Lu Peng ed., Sichuan Meishu Chubanshe, China, Sichuan, 2007, p. 24
Artistic Working Manual of Zhang Peili, Huang Zhuan and Wang Jing ed., Lingnan Meishu Chubanshe, China, Guangzhou, 2008, p. 37 

This work is generally in fair condition. There are scattered patches of craquelures are found on the surface; and minor wear and handling around the edges. Under ultraviolet light it appears to have some restoration on the surface of the painting.
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Zhang Peili, The 1980s: Transcending Personal Experience

Within the ’85 New Wave Movement that laid the groundwork for contemporary Chinese art, Zhang Peili was a central figure. The artist, who was creating easel paintings at the start of the dynamic and energetic movement, had slowly turned to conceptual art by its close, a shift that has enabled him to transcend the confines of modernism. Although Zhang formally gave up easel painting after 1994, becoming single-mindedly devoted to video art, the paintings he created around 1985 have not only been hailed by critics as works representative of “Rationalist Painting,” they are recorded testimonies to the artist’s creative beginnings. Their rarity and their incredible importance in the history of art have bestowed these easel paintings with immense value.

Loss of vitality and frozen vitality are the themes demonstrated by Zhang’s paintings during the ’85 New Wave Movement. After graduating from the Zhejiang Academy of Art, the artist organised and launched an exhibition entitled “’85 New Space,” in which he showcased two of his own series: Swimmers and Figures with Musical Instruments. The overarching tone for the exhibition was one of coldness and solitude, mixed with elements of surrealism, all characteristics that were embodied and distilled in Zhang’s paintings. Zhang’s choice of music as the subject of a series was not by whim, but by the inspiration of a neighbour from Zhang’s childhood, one who was trained in both painting and classical music. Zhang and his brother were heavily influenced by this neighbour; his brother began playing the saxophone, and Zhang captured the musical performances onto his canvases. In his 1986 painting Pause (Front View of the Saxophonist) (Lot 29), for example, the artist uses only three colors – black, white, and grey – to portray a musician performing on the saxophone.

Although the paintings from Zhang’s Music series displayed in the “85 New Space” exhibit exuded coldness, the viewer could still make out the forms of the figures and objects in the paintings. But in Pause (Front View of the Saxophonist), Zhang has evidently gone even further to eliminate any breath of life. Amid the striking contrast between light and dark, the musician’s body appears in vague, discrete blocks, with virtually no trace of detail. The performer’s face has been flattened and smoothed, his features largely omitted. Juxtaposed against the figure of the performer is the saxophone, its structure and individual components intricately and comprehensively detailed, further highlighting the reduced simplicity of the performer, while at the same time the ice-cold saxophone becomes colder yet, pushing the painting towards surrealism. As Zhang himself once said about his works from this period, “My style swayed between surrealism and ultra-realism.” Pause (Front View of the Saxophonist) fuses both of these impulses into a single painting. Although there are only a few paintings in the Music series, they are representative of a critical starting point for Zhang. In all of his later paintings, the artist remained devoted to the effect of eliminating traces of life, going so far as to exclude any human subjects from his paintings altogether in the period before the 1990s, and replacing them with latex gloves and dentist chairs. The critic Huang Zhuan once spoke to the value of Zhang’s paintings from this period, saying, “…This style which has been called ‘cold expression’ carries the intangible value of reflection that transcends that of personal experience. This reflection originates from a suspicion towards the presentation of ‘meaning.’ Within these near-frozen human figures and objects, ‘meaning’ becomes the un-referable referent. They eliminate the philosophical and spiritual mythology often present and imposed upon the images from the paintings of the 80s, acting as the detoxifying forces of the movement.”