Central Park 1

Zhao Xuebing

赵学兵

Production date
2010

Object Detail

Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
150 x 200.5 cm
Notes
Zhao Xuebing’s ongoing series of paintings of New York’s Central Park, mostly painted from memory after his return to live and work in China, recall nineteenth century collodion tintypes or cyanotype photographs –– nostalgic and elusive, with hints of solarisation, there are slippages between the positive and negative image. They are like dream landscapes, lonely and desolate, and a little strange. Central Park 1 (2010) shows a monochrome vista of slender trees crowded together, and a foreground of bracken and broken branches, suggesting a slightly blurry old photograph, much enlarged. The painting is filled with a dappled light. Having lived and worked in Paris for five years, studying French painters in the museums, Zhang says he owes a particular debt to the Post-Impressionists, and to Cezanne most especially. His other source of inspiration is Chinese: a Qing Dynasty painter of the Nanjing School, Gong Xian, whose ink on paper landscape works are similarly filled with moving light and shadow falling on gnarled trees and rustling, shifting leaves.
Accession number
2016.121
Artist details