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Qi Zhilong Imaging a Changing Society through Women

At first glance the 14 paintings featured in Qi Zhilong’s exhibition at the National Gallery resemble pin-ups fit for a calendar

Carla Bianpoen (The Jakarta Post)
JAKARTA
Sun, March 8, 2009

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Qi Zhilong Imaging a Changing Society through Women

At first glance the 14 paintings featured in Qi Zhilong’s exhibition at the National Gallery resemble pin-ups fit for a calendar.

But a closer look and a chat with the artist through his English-speaking wife reveals that there is more to these works than the initial gaze makes visible.

What the women represent, through their various styles, is the various stages of development in Chinese society since the Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong in 1966.

Reminders of Chairman Mao are seen in the typical caps and uniforms that were intended to make women appear like men - no feminine beauty was to be evident.

But the winds of change that swept over China, relaxing the strict rules and gradually opening up the society. Beauty became an obsession and artists became passionate about painting beautiful women in fashionable clothing.

The caps offer a reminder of the Mao period, but their transformation into an element of modern fashion is notable. Sometimes playfully combined with modern, Western inspired jacket, it is the plaited hair flowing out from underneath that is the most striking representation of changing times.

During the Cultural Revolution, according to curator Jim Supangkat, women had to hide their

hair - to look beautiful was almost a sin.

Trying  to explore the changing ways of Chinese society through beautiful women,  Qi Zhilong, whom the revered Chinese curator Li Xianting has called one of the only two artists of Gaudi Kitch “whose works have found maturity” (the other is Feng Zhengjie), has a long record of prominent exhibitions.

From initial consumer icons which he exhibited in 1994, he has now, fifteen years later, evolved to explore society. Using beautiful women as metaphors has, however, remained a constant.

The cap and the uniform are gradually leaving his canvases, particularly in his most recent paintings. If this is a sign, then his future works may well be free of historical ties. It will be interesting to see his next explorations.

Qi Zhilong’s exhibition was organized by the CP Foundtion, which organized the CP Biennale in 2003. At that time, CP found support for its concept of “art with an accent” from Chinese artists including Gu Wenda, Fang Lijun, Yue Mingjun, and Wang Guangyi, who pledged to promote Asian contemporary art.

Gu Wenda and Yue Mingjun participated in the CP Biennale, while the foundation organized solo exhibitions for Fang Lijun, Yang Shaobing and Chao Chunya at the National Gallery.

Djie Tjian An, chairman of the foundation, said that the next solo exhibition CP will organize at the National Gallery will be for Chusin Setiadikara, a realist who had a solo exhibition Washington, DC in 2002.

Meanwhile, the CP Art Space that has been hibernating for some time will emerge from its renovations with a space double its original size in about two years time.

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