Artist Tang Zhigang (1959-)
Tang Zhigang was born in 1959 at Kunming, China. He grew up in a military family where his father was a officer in Red Army and his mother was a prison warden. Tang joined the PLA army directly after graduating from high school; as a career soldier he continued to paint and became known for his expressionistic and bluntly honest portraits of a soldier's life. In 1979 his battalion was among the forces sent to Vietnam for combat action in Sino-Vietnamese conflict. |
Biography
1959 Born in Kunming, Yunnan, China 1989 Graduated from Fine Art lnstitute of The People's Liberation Army, Beijing, China SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Never Grow Up - Tang Zhigang 1977-2007, doArt Gallery, Beijing, China; Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea (2008) 2006 Chinese Fairytale 2006, Red Bridge Gallery, Shanghai, China 2005 Chinese Fairytale, Canvas International Art, Amsterdam, NetherlandsChinese Fairy Tale, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong KongChina's Fairytale, Nordica Gallery (today TGC Nordica), Kunming, ChinaMeeting in Painting: Tang Zhigang, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris, France 2002 Half a Soldier's Life- Paintings by Tang Zhigang, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong 2000 Children in Meeting, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong 1994 The Life of Soldiers, Yunnan Art Academy, Kunming, China SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2012 LATITUDE/ATTITUDE: 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong 2010 On Yunnan: A Branch of Chinese Contemporary Art Since the 1990s, Beijing Center for the Arts, Contemporary Art Academy of China, Beijing, ChinaReshaping History: Chinart from 2000 to 2009, China National Convention Centre (2010); Today Art Museum (2010); Arario Gallery (2010), Beijing, ChinaEast/West: Visually Speaking, Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, University of Louisiana, Lafayette (2010); MoCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville (2010); University Art Museum, Colorado State University, Fort Collins (2011); Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami (2011); Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene(2011); Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings (2012); Art Museum of South Texas, South Texas Institute for the Arts, Corpus Christi, USA (2012)2009Beijing - Havana: New Contemporary Chinese art Revolution, Cuba Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba 2008 Beijing-Athens: Contemporary Art from China, Technopolis, Athens, GreeceFacing China-Works of Art from The Fu Ruide Collection, Akureyri Art Museum, Listagil, Iceland (2008); Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria (2008); Stadtgalerie Schwaz, Schwaz, Austria (2008); Haugar-Vestfold Kunst Museum, Thonsberg, Norway (2009); Salo Art Museum, Salo, Finland (2009); Kuopio Art Museum, Kuopio, Finland(2009); Ystads Konst Museum, Ystad, Sweden (2010); Singer Museum, Laren, the Netherlands (2011);Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Recklinghausen, Germany (2012) 2007 Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany 2002 CHINaRT, Contemporary Chinese Art, organized by MKM Museum Küppersmühle, (Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art) Duisburg, Germany (2002); MACRO-Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rome, Italy (2003); Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2003); Municipal Gallery, Bydgoszcz, Poland(2004); La Lonja, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2004)Beijing Inaugural Exhibition, Schoeni Art Gallery, Beijing, China 2000 Transparence, opacite? Touming bu touming: 14 Artistes Contemporains Chinois, Parc de la Vilette, Paris, France Archived from <http://www.schoeniartgallery.com/artists/152-tang-zhigang/biography/> |
Tang Zhigang's Art
In the late 1980s Tang entered the oil painting department of PLA Art Academy in Beijing and began to use oil painting as the medium of his art since then. He described and expressed the chaos and bureaucracy he personally experienced by being closely engaged in military. By the late 1990s, Tang Zhigang created Children in Meeting series including the 'Chinese Fairytale' which has children dressed up like adult soldiers or officers and acting like them. |
Early works of Tang Zhigang
| Growing up in a military family has influenced Tang's artistic expressions heavily. Because his whole life was engaged in military, most of Tang's artworks deals with military related scenes. The early works of Tang Zhigang (late 1980s) were more realistic and straight forward the the recent works (1990s~). They are basically the common scenes and the portraits of soldiers' life that he could see by growing up in military family and working in military, such as soldiers, prisoners, and meetings or presentations of military officers. |
Recent works of Tang Zhigang
From 1998, Tang Zhigang started to use children as the subject for his paintings instead of adults. In the past, his paintings were more realistic but recently it has become more symbolistic and Surrealist-inspired. He said "My earlier painting activities in the military may be compared to growing flowers and plants. I was actually cultivating myself. Today, my "Children in Meeting" is based more on "strategy" or "pre-meditated plans". Variety is created for the sake of variety; hence art history is being made outside of economic and cultural development. My earlier works are sincere or "good", and my present ones are "successful". My earlier works have served their purpose; they are healing, soothing and down-to-earth. My present works are worrisome, unconfident and unsure as to where they may lead. Every day I think about further expansion." Archived from <http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/tang-zhigang-5078574-details.aspx> Tang’s early work focuses on depictions of the Chinese army, while his more recent work has focuses more on social and political issues. He has been drawing paintings of political satire. To express the communist propaganda, he generally uses color red for the background of his paintings. | |