ZHANG JIANHUA

Zhang Jianhua’s sculptures address the social issues facing the majority living in China today: The laborers and peasants living on the outskirts of China’s booming cities who are the workforce and anonymous victims fueling China’s rapid urbanization. The living and working conditions of these people are difficult and often dangerous, but their plight, in the interests of progress, is most often ignored. Zhang Jianhua is one of the only artists living in China today whose work addresses this extremely important social issue.

Zhang’s sculptures are life-size or larger and have been cast in fiberglass from clay moulds. The surface texture is rough and earthy and has been painted to resemble clothes. Most usually arranged in groups, they stand or are caught going about their business, their bodies bent with the exhaustion of labor: Peasants stare blankly into space and coal-miners clutch their heads, the faces fixed in nameless agony. Hauntingly realist, Zhang Jianhua views his provocative and often controversial works as an absolutely essential prod to the Chinese social conscience, which he feels is lacking.