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Thursday 6 February

Zhang Fangbai: The Black Eagle and Transcendence

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, it is high time we talked about Zhang Fangbai (born in 1965 in Hengyang). This Chinese artist, whose presence on the international scene is becoming increasingly unavoidable, deserves a closer look at his work with the attention it merits, far from the conceptual shortcuts that plague our era. Zhang Fangbai offers us a radically different approach, a vision that transcends clichés while being deeply rooted in Chinese tradition. His black-and-white works, created through the collision of oil painting and Chinese ink, are not merely stylistic exercises. They are a visceral response to our era, obsessed with garish colors and the spectacular at all costs.

His series of eagles, started in the 1990s, represents far more than a simple ornithological study. These monumental birds of prey, emblematic figures of power, become under his brush manifestations of Kantian sublimity, presences that confront us with our own insignificance. As Edmund Burke wrote in his aesthetic treatise “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757): “Terror is, in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently the ruling principle of the sublime”. Zhang’s eagles embody precisely this sublime terror, oscillating between threat and fascination.

In his large-scale landscapes, Zhang transposes the tradition of shanshui (山水) into a contemporary language that dialogues with Western abstract expressionism. But make no mistake: unlike Pollock, who sought to express his tormented ego, Zhang aims to efface himself in the face of something greater than himself. His compositions evoke Theodor Adorno’s reflections on “negativity” in art, the capacity to resist the homogenizing forces of modern society.

His abstract landscapes, vast expanses where forms seem to dissolve into emptiness, also evoke the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā (emptiness). However, this is not merely an illustration of Eastern philosophical principles. These works also dialogue with the Western tradition of the sublime, from Caspar David Friedrich to Mark Rothko. The difference is that Zhang succeeds in transcending the Western dualism between subject and object, creating spaces where the observer and the observed merge.

Zhang’s technique, blending oil and ink, creates visual tensions that reflect the contradictions of contemporary China. His works are not attempts at easy reconciliation between East and West but rather battlegrounds where these traditions clash and mutually transform. This approach recalls Walter Benjamin’s notion of “constellation”: a configuration where past and present engage in critical dialogue.

The near-exclusive use of black and gray in his work is not a superficial aesthetic choice. It represents a deliberate resistance to the society of the spectacle theorized by Guy Debord. In a world saturated with garish images and constant visual stimulation, Zhang’s monochrome becomes an act of artistic disobedience.

Superficial critics may see this as a mere aesthetic fusion of Chinese calligraphy and abstract expressionism. But it is precisely this kind of reductive reading that misses the point. Zhang is not trying to create a marketable cultural hybrid for the Western art market. His work is a profound exploration of the possibilities of transcendence in a disenchanted world.

His artistic practice could be seen as a form of what Theodor Adorno called unreconciled mimesis: an imitation that does not seek to domesticate or appropriate its object but rather to preserve its otherness. The brushstrokes in his works are not egotistic expressive gestures but attempts to capture something that constantly eludes representation.

The tension between void and form in his compositions recalls Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the “flesh of the world”. The negative spaces in his works are not mere absences but active presences that structure our perception. This approach also aligns with François Jullien’s ideas on the Chinese notion of “shi” (势), the inherent potential of situations that precedes any actualization.

It would be easy to see his work as mere nostalgia for Chinese tradition. This would be a mistake. Zhang creates what Walter Benjamin called “dialectical images”, where past and present enter a constellation to produce new meanings. His eagles are not static traditional symbols but unsettling presences that question our relationship to power and transcendence.

The way Zhang manipulates ink and oil creates effects that go beyond mere technical virtuosity. These materials become vehicles for an ontological exploration reminiscent of Martin Heidegger’s reflections on the artwork as a site for the unveiling of truth. But unlike the Western conception of truth as aletheia (unveiling), Zhang works with a notion of truth closer to dao (道), where truth is not so much revealed as suggested.

Zhang Fangbai reminds us that true innovation can come from a deep dialogue with tradition. His work is not an attempt at superficial synthesis between East and West but an exploration of the productive tensions that emerge from their encounter. In this, he aligns with Theodor Adorno’s reflections on the need to preserve non-identity in art, that resistance to easy reconciliation that characterizes truly significant works.

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