Zhang Xiaogang (born 1958, Kunming, China) is a Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. He is famous with his Bloodline series, where mostly monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people are presented as part of the artist's exploration of the 'family' concept.
Zhang Xiaogang was trained as an oil painter at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. After his graduation in 1982, he joined a group of young avant-garde artists who came to international prominence in 1980. In his earlier paintings, Xiaogang explored human values through the lens of the traditions coming from the rural Chinese culture. The artist continues to work around the multifaceted concept of 'family', the notion of identity within the Chinese culture, and collectivism. His imagery is inspired by the family photos from the Cultural Revolution period, as well as the European tradition of surrealism. Xiaogang’s portraits represent an infinite genealogies, where the sitters' appearance is almost homogenous. The colour schemes, such as black and white, translate the language of photography into paint that incorporates the aesthetics of the traditional Chinese charcoal drawing, giving the image a nostalgic quality. The occasional splashes of colour and red lines running through the paintings carry a substantial part of Xiaogang's symbolic language. The use of colour has an ambivalent purpose - while it is used to idealize the sitter, the splashes also create demarcations, reminiscent of birthmarks and aged film. Xiaogang was represented in many international exhibitions including Mao Goes Pop at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art in 1993, Sao Paolo Biennial in 1994, and Venice Biennial in 1995.

Zhang Xiaogang

Inspired by contemporary tensions in China, Zhang Xiaogang makes grim, unsettling portraits that consider identity and heredity in a collectivist state.

"Mercury Sea" belongs to the set of twenty lithographs from "The Storyteller's Enchantments of Zhang Xiaogang ", which comes as a limited edition of 130 rare books.Inspired by family photos from the Cultural Revolution period, as well as the European tradition of surrealism, Zhang Xiaogang’s lithographs engage with the notion of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism.

Basing his work around the concept of ‘family’ –immediate, extended, and societal – Xiaogang’s portraits depict an endless genealogy of imagined forebears and progenitors, each unnervingly similar and distinguished by minute difference. With their visages masked in soft shadows and rendered slightly out of focus, Xiaogang heightens the sense of inconsequential identity; only the eyes are fully illuminated, hollow and clone-like, perfect identikit transplants hallmarking the succession of ductility over will.

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“ There’s a complex relationship between the state and the people that I could express by using the Cultural Revolution. China is like a family, a big family. Everyone has to rely on each other and to confront each other. „

—Zhang Xiaogang