Join us for an in-gallery conversation with artist Zhao Gang and guest curator Christian Viveros-Fauné for the opening of Zhao Gang: History Painting. Gang will discuss his paintings, practice, and how he has come to be positioned as an insider’s outsider of both Chinese and American cultures. Experience the artist’s work hung salon style in a 130-square-foot “apartment” built within the exhibition gallery and learn more about this format that mimics the 1980s phenomenon of “apartment art.” Zhao Gang: History Painting opens on Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 6pm and is on view through January 5, 2020.

Zhao Gang (b. 1961, Beijing) is a key figure in the development of Chinese contemporary art. The youngest member of the Stars Group—China’s first modern art movement—Gang left China in 1983 to study, live, and work in Europe and the United States. After returning to China twenty-four years later, in 2007, Gang developed a dynamic, provocative painting practice that freely combines Western and Eastern influences while reflecting on the profound changes affecting his native country. Before Gang left, there was no such thing as “Chinese contemporary art.” By the time he returned, globalization had ushered in not just multiple styles and forms of art, but also an entire art economy.