Artist   

Zhang Keduan

News Release  

"37 degrees -- Zhang Ketuan's Solo Exhibition" will open at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 30, 2018, at the small exhibition hall of "West Lake, Landscape, Culture -- Art Gallery" in Huanglong Hotel, Hangzhou.

As the title of Zhang Keduan's exhibition, "37 Degrees" aims to explore the relationship between artists' works, others and social background. What I want to express is that Mr. Zhang Keduan has always put himself in a just creative environment, and has made a "gentle" artistic transformation between a plain-spoken emotion and a relatively daily life experience. Let's call this "mild" at 37 degrees, because a person's body temperature is relatively real.

This is the 58th exhibition held by Hanyang Art Center in the Art Gallery of Huanglong Hotel, showing 9 works created by artists from different periods. The extension will last until September 22, 2018.

Foreword

37 degrees

Thirty-seven degrees is the theoretical normal body temperature, below or above it is in the abnormal range. When it comes to art, body temperature is just a metaphor. Body temperature can be understood as the temperature of an artist's emotional output, the temperature of an artist's hands when creating a work, or the temperature of an artist's mind when facing a problem. Different from body temperature, these kinds of temperatures cannot be measured by conventional instruments, but they should be linked to the artist's body temperature. Good works of art should be consistent with the artist's body temperature, which is real and on the same scale.

Talking about Zhang Keduan's art, I think we can start with an artist's body temperature. In the process of reading teacher Zhang Keduan's creation experience, I have a simple and sincere feeling: his writing is not gorgeous, does not speak empty truths, has nothing to do with the philosophy or aesthetic rhetoric on paper, he will not hide the mistakes of creation, will not cover up the hesitation of the artist, will not complain about the helplessness of The Times. Zhang Keduan is consistent in his artistic creation that matches his words. It can be seen from the two works "Telling My Father" and "Listening to My Mother" that the artist's recording and imagination of life traces reflect the unique emotional output function of an ordinary person rather than an artist. To record the words spoken by the mother of one's child by embroidering the Diamond Sutra, or to express one's thoughts of his father by embroidering the Diamond Sutra, makes one more like a father and a son than an artist. The two works with words bear the distinct impression of the flow of time. Zhang Keduan maintains a personal temperature by creating his works in a way similar to a diary. The way of "writing" on the unbleu cotton thread reflects the emotional clues buried by the artist in the visual art.

People have a relatively normal body temperature, so whether there will be social temperature in a society composed of people, I think this analogy is valid. But social temperature cannot be measured like human body temperature or given a relatively reasonable normal range. But it is certain that only when the gap between social temperature and individual body temperature is the smallest can people's life and emotions be kept in the most comfortable state. As far as artists are concerned, artistic creation also needs to match with similar social temperature, so as to achieve a true and comfortable state. As far as zhang Keduan's works are concerned, many works of the artist convey the discomfort of social temperature implicitly. From Winter Prairie (1985) to Radio (2003), artists have depicted the influence of the social environment and artistic atmosphere they have experienced or are experiencing on their creations from their own perspectives. Going back to the context of creation, the artistic environment created by Winter Prairie is rarely characterized by sculptures that can be completely independent of literary and historical narratives. In the process of this work, Mr. Zhang Keduan summarized the character and image of the creation object in the structure of visibility and conveyed its spirit. "Radio" is a simplification of the artistic language the artist has lived through and memorized -- a table, a statue, a trumpet. This is the contemporaneism of an artist's time, and this small work is placed on the table of real life by the artist. The relationship between tables can also be seen as the superposition of memory and reality. The high or low temperatures in the epochal symbols are rationally dissolved by the artist with his body temperature.

When it comes to the temperature of the individual and the temperature of The Times, from the perspective of an ordinary person or an artist, we will face the problem of "the other", that is, the temperature of the other. There is the other in life, the other in society and the other in creation. We can also understand "he" as distance, which is reflected in the corresponding distance in many works of Mr. Zhang Keduan. Imitation of the Old Secretary retraces the depiction works from the changes of historical background, which reflects the individual's spiritual distance from others. "Learning From Lei Feng" summarizes the familiar objects as bystanders, and expresses the temporary relationship between the individual and the idol. "Jilford" collects other traces of everyday things and discusses individual tracks in the common environment. "A Bottle" wraps the time of the individual repeatedly. In the same same environment, the original functional attributes of an article are removed and the attributes of the work are obtained accordingly. The work "Parking to Eat" raises the original sin question about the intuitive difference of personal identity, what is the difference between us and others, and what is the significance of this shifting difference?

The body temperature of an individual and the body temperature of others constitute the temperature of the whole society, but it is certain that the temperature of an individual is definitely not the average of the social temperature, and the social temperature is not the superposition of all individual body temperatures. This analogy is also applicable in art. As the title of Zhang Keduan's exhibition, 37 Degrees aims to explore the relationship between artists' works, others and social background. What I want to express is that Mr. Zhang Keduan has always put himself in a just creative environment, and has made a "gentle" artistic transformation between a plain-spoken emotion and a relatively daily life experience. Let's call this "mild" at 37 degrees, because a person's body temperature is relatively real.

Lin Shuchuan

The exhibition works 

Exhibition site

The reports 

Artron Art Network - "37 Degrees" Zhang Keduan solo exhibition

Tencent - Artist Zhang Keduan's solo exhibition 37 Degrees: The Natural Transparency of Prudence and warmth