The Dream Weavers

15 January – 28 February 2014

Mulan Gallery will re-visit works by Beijing Contemporary artist, Lu Peng and sculptor, Zhang Hua. During the past two decades, Lu Peng has become the singular voice in Chinese Contemporary Art. His lively art encompasses a rich narrative of traditions and life’s timeless individual and collective rituals. A silver medalist in the 2008 Olympic Landscape Sculpture Design International competition, Zhang Hua is well-known for his family-themed sculptures which are crisp, genteel, rarely bulky, and lively. He is recognized as one of China’s most formidable sculptors.

Chronicling a life that straddles two of the most intriguing periods of recent Chinese Cultural and Political History, Lu Peng’s extensive range of paintings, drawings, and etchings are thought out precisely to capture the social and cultural details, the characters and the rhythms that will later emerge in his oeuvre of works. Lu Peng has a unique perspective among Contemporary Chinese artists. In terms of composition, he uses the Tibetan Buddhist religious Thangka scroll as the reincarnating spatio-temporal method of description.

Lu Peng’s paintings are like an attempt to make the body fly away from the barrier of walls using a contemporary drawing style. The paintings are a carnival of desire, aspiration, and decadence. The paintings perform in the range of truth and falseness, history and reality, which is similar to the classical Chinese opera but also has realistic aspects to it. Voyeurism also plays an important role in Lu Peng’s narrative.

‘Through The Wall’ captures the “opportune encounter” between Lu Peng’s real growth of his art talent and the confusion stemming from the shackles of history. The infinite charm of Chinese culture is akin to “walls”.

Extenuated limbs and bodies, flowing lines, motion, and youthfulness are the extension of hopes, energetically rushing towards the future with dreams of reaching their final goal. Zhang Hua’s successful representation of arms stretching upward, reflecting the inner desire of people today and brings out the spirit from within. The human figures are invariably caught in mid-action and never appear still, posed, and static. It is this dynamism and the gaiety of the bodies that capture the gender.

His life-size sculptures can be found dispersed around China, Seoul, and France. One can easily spot ‘Sea Breeze’ in the China Olympic Park, ‘Flower Charm’ in Beijing International Sculpture Park, ‘Eagle Catching Chicks’ in Xinjiang, and so on.