ZHANG DALI

Zhang Dali's work actively engages with the rapidly changing environment in China. Zhang started working in portraiture as one of Beijing's first graffiti artists, spraying and carving heads into the walls of the hundreds of buildings scheduled for destruction. Working across a wide variety of media - from urban art, to archiving photographs of Mao, and large scale installations - Zhang's portraits document a contemporary social history of a culture in radical development and flux. Zhang trained at the Beijing Central Academy of Art & Design. After studying painting in China, he went to Italy, where he discovered graffiti art. He was the only graffiti artist in Beijing throughout the early 1990s, and is the first artist since Keith Haring and Jackson Pollock to be given the cover of Time magazine. From 1995 to 1998 he spray-painted over 2000 giant profiles of his own bald head on buildings throughout Beijing, placing the images alongside 'chai' characters painted by the city authorities to indicate that a building is scheduled for demolition. The appearance of these images became the subject of media debate in Beijing in 1998. He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including the International Center for Photography in New York, Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo and the 2006 Gwangju Biennale in Korea.

MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA 

Sammlung Essl - Kunsthaus, Klosterneuburg    

Gwangju Biennale Foundation, Gwangju La Cina, Spazio Oberdan, Milan, Italy

Museum Beelden aan Zee, Holland      

Millennium Museum, Beijing, China     

Museum Beelden aan Zee, Holland                      

Denver Art Museum, Denver, USA       

Guangdong Museum of Art      

Singapore Art Museum               

Finland Museum of Photography, Helsinki

Oulu Art Museum, Oulu             

Institute of Contemporary Art, London               

Mu Art Foundation, Eindhoven, Netherlands   

Chulalongkom Museum, Bangkok         

Design Museum, Beijing             

Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena

Kansas City Art Institute

Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art

UCCA - Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing

Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico City

Groninger Museum, Groningen

Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz

Nasher Museum of Art, Durham

Sammlung Dahlmann - Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren

Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee

ASU Art Museum, Arizona

Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen

ICP - International Center of Photography, New York City