Field Trip One – Visit to Saatchi Gallery
19/11/2008
The Gallery building has a military past.
We were waiting for a moment to opening and finally got inside. I didn’t picked up the guide to make my trip more personal, it was a good idea.
Gal-1
Liu Wei Love it! Bite it!
2005-2007- Editable dog chews
City build of natural, paper-like material. Mixed architecture styles of modern city combined into artistic vision through inacurate shapes with perfect proportions and scale.
I was very surprised when I realised what kind of material was used, it gave the pop-cultural meaning, brilliant!
Li Songsong The Decameron
Oil on canvas
Darkly expressed oil painting showing governing party. Items are black, people are coloured war-green, painting is not detailed, made of wide brushes, highly expressive. People look like a gray-to-green mass.
Ling Songsong Cuban Sugar
Oil on canvas
Painting shows the people on a banquet, they suppose to be some kind of VIP’s set by circular table. Painting is divided by 3D, varied in colours rectangles (made from varied materials).
Expression of variety but with the same colout-pallete. Dark colours, makes me feel rather sad.
Gal-2
Zhang Huan Ash Head No.1
Sculpture of varied materials and dust. Reminds me the Chinese demolished buildings while building the Three Gorges Dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam).
Head has closed eyes and no mouth. It is a symbolic meaning of the Chinese working class society for me. Sculpture is rough, same like feelings while watching.
My note: You can create people, you can create society through the power of terror. Don’t think, don’t look, don’t talk.
Li Songsong Gift
White, gray, black oil painting showing the group of people carrying an aeroplane. Attractive, joyful – but worthless. Yet another carrot on the rod. Piece of nothing cheering people.
Zhang Huan Seeds
Incence ash, charocoal and resin on canvas. Picture of workers. No one is focused about anything besides the work. No individuality, people are just working shapes. Materials and colours are building the atmosphere of nothingness. It’s astonishing.
Zhang Huan Young Mother
Incence ash on linen
Picture of a young woman (girl) sitting half-naked on the single chair by the table. Symbolism of mothership is achieved by the track of milk from the breasts (made of the dust). It forms a strange shape. One of the most remorable picture of the exhibiotion for me.
Zeng Fanzhi Hospital Series
Meat-like, bleeding characters. Brings me bad memories and thoughs from my cancer-fight.
Zhang Xiaogang Untitled and Untitled
Oil on canvas
Portrait of a boy. Simplified and naive form with shaping characteristic to soc-real propaganda art. Portrait is smudged and lighted softly which gives the effect of blur in the meaning of feelings. Great colours. Use of the pink on the face gives the painting a littre air and makes it a little more abstractive.
-”-Zhang Xiaogang Big Family
Oil on canvas
The red boy has a red blood-line from his heart to mother and sister. The red filling of the character stands for affiliation to socialistic party.
Similar meanings are also shown on the works: Bloodline and My Dream: Little General shown below:
29/10/2009 at 3:16 PM
I have been looking at reviews of Young Mother by Zhang Huan, at the Saatchi gallery last year, as I was shocked by the limited nature of the catalogue blurb, and its lack of real observation of the image. This young women is little more than a child, so the image of her with breasts spurting with milk and looking vulnerable and lost triggers far more than the strange reference to the Madonna. I was glad to see your response.