New York
For decades now, Beijing-based Zhang Dali has been making art that challenges China’s status quo, which (most of the Chinese art world would agree) needs to be challenged. His graffiti and cut-out outlines of his head in the ruins of Beijing buildings—destroyed to make room for new architecture—were signs of humanity in an otherwise dehumanized context. Such work has played an important role in the development of contemporary art in China, and Zhang is recognized as having the integrity of independence—a claim not so many Chinese artists can make anymore, caught as they are in the mesh of the bubble economy. “Square,” Zhang’s recent New York show, confronted viewers with a poetic vision of Tiananmen Square, a place designed to promote unity…see the entire review in the print version of June’s Sculpture magazine.
