For several years now, the works of the artist Zhang Dali have established themselves in the world of art and particularly in modern and contemporary art auction houses as well as on the art market. Inspired by Asian art, Zhang Dali mixes his initial sensitivity as a photographer with his Chinese painting technique. Whether in galleries or in the largest private collections, exhibitions, as well as in museums of modern and contemporary art, Zhang Dali’s works of art rank among the major Chinese contemporary artists of the 21st century.
Born in 1963 in Harbin, China, Zhang Dali studied Fine Arts and worked as a photographer. At the same time, he became known as one of the first Chinese street artists. Indeed, in the 1990s he drew his head in profile on buildings designated as ruins by the administration by means of an ideogram painted on the walls.
As his fame grows considerably in the early 2000s, Zhang Dali decides to put it at the service of his social convictions. In particular, he represents the itinerant construction workers who go from site to site in precarious and dangerous conditions. They will inspire the artist’s series of Offspring, referring to the men from the Chinese countryside who come to work in the megalopolises. Zhang Dali will represent them suspended and shackled in strange postures, all of the same colour and size, marked with a serial number.
Zhang Dali’s desire to denounce is also embodied in his series entitled AK-47, which was his pseudonym as a street artist and which he wants as a tribute to the victims whoever they are. He begins by representing in series the assault rifle of the same name and then evolves to use the name as a motif for his paintings.
Zhang Dali has exhibited in China as well as in London at the Saatchi Gallery, in New York and San Francisco, in Korea and at the Rencontres d’Arles.
