At the age of just 18, Zhao Gang, the son of Manchurian intellectuals, was the youngest member of the legendary Star Group, alongside Ai Weiwei as well as Huang Rui. In 1979, the way the up-and-coming avant-garde group in China protested against the party’s control of art was as influential as it was unsuccessful. Later, he studied in Europe and in the United States, acquired American citizenship, and is regarded as one of the outstanding “representatives of his generation, who truly understands East as well as West and speaks Chinese and English as a native language” (Phil Tinara) and who, as a passionate painter, consequently, also blends the visual language of East and West into a hybrid in a subtle, rebellious, sensitive, frenetic, mischievous, and absurd manner.

In 2018 he took part in the survey exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” at the Guggenheim Museum, which showed the crème de la crème of contemporary art. The publication provides an overview of six central exhibitions from recent years, and takes a retrospective look at his work and life.

Text by: Zhao Gang, Pi Li
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