Zhang Xiaogang

Galerie de France, Paris
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Paris, Galerie de France, Zhang Xiaogang Forget and Remember, 2003, p. 24, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is slightly brighter and more vibrant in the original. There is less blue in the background in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is very minor rubbing to the lower right corner and along the extreme lower edge towards the lower left corner. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet light.
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A giant, close-up depiction of a male figure lost in reverie, Forget and Remember No.1 is the first and one of the largest works in the series begun by Zhang Xiaogang in 2003. All Zhang Xiaogang's work deals to a greater or lesser extent with the plight of history, with the artist's past - both personal and communal - and its relationship with the present. "What is most important is the present... What interests me is where history and the present cross. I am interested in society's contradictory relationship with its past" (the artist cited in Caroline Puel, 'Forget and Remember' in Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Galerie de France, Zhang Xiaogang: Mémoire et Oubli, 2003, p. 19). Explored first in his 'Bloodlines' series, it reaches its most direct expression in the diametrically opposed title of the present work: Forget and Remember no. 1.

 

Memory is the faculty with which human beings, as individuals and communities, conserve visual and sensory recollections of their past. Zhang Xiaogang's premise is the disappearance of memory and whether this can rightly be called forgetfulness or brainwashing. Zhang Xiaogang was born in the late 1950s and experienced the Cultural Revolution in his childhood and adolescence. What was initially welcomed as progress quickly became a prolonged period of sheer terror, particularly for artists and intellectuals.  Too young to be drafted into military service, he spent the later years of the revolution being re-educated as an adolescent with the peasants of Yunnan province in the southwest. Like most of his generation, his personal memory of his childhood is deeply scarred by the experience.

 

Although the passage of time brings the distance necessary to heal such mental scars, most of today's adult population witnessed first hand the deplorable persecution and the public executions that came in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Yet, in the name of economic progress and the great leaps of modernisation that China has undergone in recent decades, these events are for the most part shrouded in a collective, wilful amnesia. In part this silence is State ordained, making it easier to forget than to risk broaching politically dangerous subjects. Even today, information surrounding the devastating events of Tiananmen Square is suppressed and the events of 4^th June 1989 are yet to be officially acknowledged. Against this climate, in Forget and Remember no. 1 Zhang Xiaogang reminds us of the importance of memory and the responsibility of today's generation to communicate this to subsequent generations, so that lessons can be learned from our past. "The general question that I am asking is this: How, given past experiences as a starting point, should we manage the present? There exists a contradiction between the past and the present. This question of contradiction is essential to today's society. Our lives are nothing but contradictions, but these are what make living interesting. Of course we would like to forget our past; to keep only the good memories. For example, a migrant peasant arriving in Beijing today: the first thing he wants is to forget where he came from, in order to adapt faster. Therein lies his contradiction, since his past may also push him to make greater efforts" (Ibid, p. 18).

 

In Forget and Remember No. 1, the burden of memory is manifest in the yellow patch hovering above the right eye, the imprint of pain left on the memory. With his eyes closed and mouth open, the subject is caught in a soporific trance. The viewer is left only to speculate as to the nature of his personal memories in his mind, which, given the generic identity of Zhang Xiaogang's protagonists, necessarily dovetail into the shared common psyche of his nation's history. Zhang Xiaogang reminds us that in the fast changing society of modern China, economic progress should not come at the cost of loss of individual and national identity. In a stunningly still, quiet and haunting image, Zhang Xiaogang communicates the imperatives of remembering our past for the good of the future. "It is good that Chinese society develops, I am the first to appreciate the effect. But this new society should not be built on the destruction and denial of the self" (Ibid, p. 19).