WORKS ELABORATION:
We have all read Lu Xun’s works since childhood. Although people have different impressions when reading them, what he conveyed to us was roughly the same. Acting as a sieve, I create sculptures to allow people to understand my personal feelings about reading Lu Xun’s works. I don’t really want to show my feelings in a very figurative way, so I use this kind of language with a strong sense of composition. Strong light and shade, clear lines, and the well-spaced spatial structure together constitute this group of works with complex emotions and serious attitudes.
TUTOR COMMENT:
Zhang Chenxiao’s graduation work is a surprise, and is also a result forced out of the pandemic.
This work appears to be in the form of modernist compositional works produced right after the industrial revolution in the West, but due to their short-term existence, they didn’t develop enough to transcend the form and generate a sculptural language. This kind of imperfection from rapid development happens to be complementary to our tradition.
Zhang Chenxiao takes the traditional Chinese modelling theory of “strokes generate with each other” to refine his work repeatedly, creating a rich sense of readability and rhythm that is closely associated with the subject. Ultimately, a simple form leads to a classic.
-- Zhang Wei