ArtRadar: Emerging Chinese artist Zhang Peng has first solo show in New York gallery Eli Klein November 6, 200811/06/2008
Zhang Peng is featured in Art Radar.
Eli Klein Fine Art is pleased to present “Fascinating Beauty,” Zhang Peng's first solo exhibition in New York featuring his new photography, paintings and watercolors. At age 27, Zhang Peng is one of China’s most provocative, talented and promising young artists. While it’s still early in his career, Zhang Peng has already received attention from important collectors and media throughout the world. Reproductions of his photos have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times online and have graced the covers of numerous art magazines. Zhang Peng has most recently exhibited at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, the Chosun Ilbo Museum in Seoul, and is the youngest artist in the inaugural exhibition of the new Saatchi Museum in London.
Eric C. Shiner, The Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Warhol Museum, has written the following about Zhang Peng:
“In contrast to the major trends of Chinese contemporary art that in recent years have taken the art world by storm—namely Social Realism and Chinese Pop—the photographs and paintings of Zhang Peng enter into what might be uncharted territory for his native China, but a fully recognized genre in mature art markets around the globe.
In so many ways, Zhang Peng is revolutionizing Chinese contemporary art, using shocking images to literally open up an entirely new can of worms. His work is alluring, just as it is repelling. He is global in his vocabulary, just as he is local in his focus. By looking to and depending on a litany of international art trends and histories in the construction of his own unique visual vocabulary, Zhang Peng is helping to move Chinese contemporary art beyond its aggrandized position as the “must-have” trophy of collectors around the world into a contemporary art that must be reckoned with in a whole new light. Of course, many of his predecessors including Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan use the body and sexuality as a main tenet of their art work, and yet, through his depiction of alternate female bodies engaged in play that smashes the status quo, Zhang Peng is creating a new way of reading China today, and love it or hate it, it is a story with which we must all come to terms.”
Fascinating Beauty, on view from November 8th to January 5th at Eli Klein Fine Art, is accompanied by a fully illustrated 60 page catalogue with an essay by Eric C. Shiner.
For further information, please contact the gallery at (212) 255-4388 or info@kleinsungallery.com.
Zhang Peng is featured in Art Radar.