The first UK exhibition of paintings by Zhang Qikai (b1950) will feature 20 of his recent works. many using the image of the panda which in this Chinese artist's interpretation suggests the desire to escape, as indicated by paintings that show the animal driving away in a car or clinging to the stem of a rose (above). In Zhang Qikai's work there are always suggestions of a quest for freedom at the same time as there are intimations of the constraints that hold us back.
Born in Sichuan Province in 1950, Qikai has shown extensively in China, Japan and in Germany, where he lived in the 1990s. The apparent loneliness of life in a foreign land and a deep understanding of the differences between east and west are ever present in his work.
Having returned to his native China in 2000, Zhang Qikai began to use the panda in his work. The panda is a symbol of peace and a protected species in China, yet cuts a lonely, solitary figure in Zhang Qikai’s work. The environment where the panda resides varies but void and quiet are a common characteristic. The panda is enclosed in the material world and overwhelmed by consumer culture, as if to imply his and China’s predicament with the modern world.
Zhang Qikai's work plays on the themes of conflict, consumerism and cultural discord.
At the same time as being a practicing artist, Zhang Qikai teaches oil painting at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, and is involved with the Contemporary Visual Art Research Center, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, and the Research Center of Design and Art, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
Zhang Qikai, 29 May-21 June 2008, Marlborough Fine Art, London
