Gang Zhao "Earlier Works"

Nagel Draxler Kabinett, Berlin

Gang Zhao "Earlier Works"
Opening: Wednesday, June 28, 7-10 pm
Exhibition: June 29 – September 2, 2017

As one of the youngest members of the "Star Group", Zhao Gang participated in some of post-1949 China's earliest modern art exhibitions before pursuing his own career in New York.
His paintings explore the themes of the legacy of imperial systems, politics and heritage, between both the Asian world and the Western world. Being an artist of bilateral heritage, Zhao Gang reflects on canonized Western positions from a transcultural perspective. His latest museum exhibitions include "The Road to Serfdom II", 2016 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Sanitago de Chile, "Paramour's Garden", 2015 at the Suzhou Museum, Suzhou, "The Road to Serfdom", 2015, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing.

In showing this exhibition of earlier works by Zhao Gang in our Berlin Kabinett parallel to our Kippenberger show at the gallery, we would like to suggest a certain connection. Both painters are often described as exceptionally prolific and bitingly sarcastic. In retrospective, Kippenberger's productivity can be seen as a "critical affirmation" of late capitalism, while Zhao Gang's work could be read as a "critical affirmation" of late communism, namely, as once described by philosopher and sinologist Francois Jullien: "capitalist bulimia flanked by the communist party".