«ART IS WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH»

More significant, perhaps, is the content. Fang and Yue helped found Cynical Realism, an art movement in the late '80s that served as an ironic, chiding response to Mao Zedong's edict that all art should glorify the state. Yue's iconic image, a self-portrait locked in a frenzied forced grin, is one of the most ubiquitous icons in Chinese art today; that, along with Fang's much-repeated bland, yawning figure, made it clear how they felt about such decrees. At his Pace opening, Zhang's new work ventured for the first time into installation and sculpture. Both there and in his painting, it's more personal, but no less marked by authoritarian rule. His project was to paint, from memory, some of the scores of family photos destroyed by the authorities during the Cultural Revolution in the late '60s and early '70s (family pictures were illegal; Zhang's parents were among the many intellectuals taken away for "re-education.

Toronto Star
Dec 12 2009