Zhang Xiaogang, born in 1958 in Kunming and graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982, is an active figure on the stage of contemporary Chinese art. The Kafka-type artist has been devoted to his attempts for a lyrical expression of his inner feelings. From a very beginner at a young age to an unexpected enrollment in the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and from the establishment of distinctive art characteristics after returning from abroad to record-breaking auctions, Zhang Xiaogang, an artist who comes back to the spiritual point of origin after a great many experiences, is asking himself in a sincere and honest way: "Why am I doing this?" To this question Zhang never hesitates to give the answer. In his interview with Yang Lan, he said: "I think I really love art and it is all I am quite sure."

Since returning from Germany, he has visited so many galleries and museums that the sight of them would make him "throw up", as he described. In this process the artist came to understand that all those masters in art history are completely beyond surpassing, not for their skills but because they already exist. "However hard you work and learn, you are nothing but remain a student forever and what's more you are outside their cultural domain. I was happy I could understand this and for a moment I felt I found my roots at last. The feeling at the time was pretty real. I seemed always in my seeking for who I was and where I belonged. It's all I wanted. Later I went back to Kunming and saw the old pictures from my childhood and I saw the pictures of my parents at their young age. Suddenly I came to realize however old they might be, you could still feel all the same the social influence on these most private family photos." (Zhang Xiaogang Interview with in Yang Lan Oriental TV Channel).

The "Big Family" series, in a cultural sense, manages to present the family background in the photo-like paintings and this family background, on the other hand, is the right miniature of the society at the time.

This piece by Zhang Xiaogang was created in 2005. It presents the fate of a young girl in a standard photo style with the symbolic Zhang-style "light spot". Photos like this can be found in the drawer of every Chinese family, some one inch and some two inches in size. Kids in the photos are mostly of this age and girls all unexceptionally wear uniform bangs above their brows, two braids, a white shirt and a red scarf. It is something of that time, a memory of that age.

"Southern People Weekly" magazine remarked: "Characters in the old photos seemingly mottled with age all wear the uniform look, dress and expression which was standardized at that time, single eyelids with pupils slightly protruding, indifferent and alert. The face seems to be behind a misty veil, displaying a strange and amazing texture, smooth, subtle and with texture."

Prior to that, Zhang Xiaogang never stopped his trace of memory and affection. If the "Big Family" is to mourn for the group consciousness, the later "Amnesia and Memory" can be regarded as a kind of private and deep brooding of the artist. As to "Amnesia and Memory", well, I am pretty concerned with personal memory. One more memory means one more loss of memory and this is the natural consequence of the rapidly changing modern life. In this hustling and bustling time, many have lost their memory when still young. If you want to adapt yourself to the life, you have got to learn to lose memory. Forget who you are and where you come from." (Zhang Xiaogang Interview with in YangLan, Oriental TV Channel)

Society is progressing faster than Zhang Xiaogang expected, where the Chinese ind it pretty necessary to learn to "forget" or rather "amnesia" has become a kind of instinct with the modern Chinese. Many have forgotten what this road looked like last year or the appearance of the building at the crossroads three months ago. While what Zhang Xiaogang tries to do in his "Landscape" series is to transform the individual awareness back to the social dimension. His "Landscape" is an effort to continue recalling the looks of the industrialized society and earlier.

Zhang Xiaogang, a well-known figure in art circles, never neglects his attitude towards art. With his studio getting increasingly big, the artist, nevertheless, remains in his deep brooding over his simple and naive question: for what he paints. This personal feeling about art is explained in his later article on the painter Magritte: "Almost all the time of his growing up, an artist has to bear the pain of bidding farewell to those beloved masters and then comes to know some other predecessor for communication. On all the way along the artist keeps his continuous cognition and constant veriication and at last those which are left to become "bosom friends" are fewer and fewer." It is the very loneliness that urges the artist to seek for a comfortable manner for expressing his inner feelings.