Chinese artist Chang Qing. Oil painting
Chinese artist Chang Qing - where he is a professor at the Central Art Academy. The scene for the show was a bit different, as it was held on the grounds of Jiangnan Hui, a club in Hangzhou set up by several of “China’s richest.” His new works on show were mostly colourful drawings and small paintings on paper, ranging from pictures of dogs, fruit, to vases, and roosters, and a large series of frogs. Mostly around A2 igzhou, where he is a professor at the Central Art Academy. The scene for the show was a bit different, as it was held on the grounds of Jiangnan Hui, a club in Hangzhou set up by several of “China’s richest.” His new works on show were mostly colourful drawings and small paintings on paper, ranging from pictures of dogs, fruit, to vases, and roosters, and a large series of frogs. Mostly around A2 in size, it was a bit confusing how the show had been curated, as paintings were framed in twos for the most part, 2 drawings of frogs, 2 roosters, 2 dogs, etc. But then some weren’t in pairs, mostly the fruits and vases.The framing also cut off some sections of the drawings, or the signatures. There wasn’t much correlation between why the drawings were paired this way, and the club had not installed any extra lighting, so once it started getting dark it became difficult to see the works.Saying that, Chang Qing is obviously an extremely talented draftsman, the line in the works on show were extremely fluid yet controlled, and combined some elements of Chinese style painting with more modern mediums, such as oil pastels and gouache. Likely in a proper gallery setting these works would have been shown to a greater advantage. Site
Alibaba CEO and well known Chinese billionaire Jack Ma talked at the opening, he is a big fan of Chang Qing’s work, as is the head of the Chinese Central Art Academy, Xu Jiang, who gave a very enthusiastic speech. The artist himself looked to be suffering awful conjunctivitis, likely brought on by the strain of putting together so many new works? The catalogue for the show is two inches thick, with a drawing/painting on each page. But then suddenly another book was produced, a catalogue of similar depth and for very different work, a myriad of black and white drawings by the same artist, but none of which were on show at the venue. By this point the artist had already been swept off in the entourage of CEOs so it was difficult to figure out why these drawings, predominantly figurative, were not on show, likely they are to feature in another venue. Anyhow, these drawings are really excellent, there’s probably as many as a thousand in the catalogue. Mostly portraits, or very zen life drawings of simple objects. Damn, its impressive to see someone who can draw as well as this chap.
Thats all the details I have, there is none of the new work online, it looks like the CEOs are getting the pick of his new work this time round, as to my understanding the current show will only be seen by private members of the club, who only number about 50.
I found one older painting online that partly represents some elements of his new style here.