Person
Artist
Chang Xugong
常徐功
Date of birth
1957
Place Of birth
Tangshan, Hebei, China
Biography
Born in 1957 and educated at Tangshan Normal University, graduating in 1980, Chang Xugong’s move to the artist’s enclave of Yuanmingyuan, near Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, placed him right at the heart of a community of radical young artists pursuing social and artistic change. Chang is most closely associated with the ‘Gaudy Art’ movement, so named by critic Li Xianting, which satirised the ‘get rich quick’ mentality prevalent in Chinese society in the 1990s, after the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping ushered in an era of entrepreneurship and prompted a love of western consumer goods that signified high status. Chang’s embroidered portraits of figures from both ‘high’ and ‘low’ ends of the social spectrum deliberately evoked the garish advertising of the period, as well as referencing the bright colours of folk arts such as embroidery and woodcuts. His work was shown in ‘Mahjong – Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection’ in Bern, Switzerland in 2005, as well as solo and group shows in China, Germany and Australia. He lives and works in Beijing.