Art of Zhang Peng
Zhang Peng was born in 1981 in Shan Dong; he currently lives in Beijing. In 2001 he graduated from the Wu Zuo Ren Art Secondary School and in 2005 he graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Art.

Zhang Peng’s photographs seduce the viewer with their deep, saturated colors and surreal imagery. The work depicts a very young forlorn girl draped in violent indulgence, stripped of innocence and youth. The images, with their poignant sense of isolation, transfix the viewer. While the girl is only a child, she wears clothes and even wedding gowns meant for women well beyond her years. She represents excess carried to an extreme. The images speak of the insatiable desire for all things Western. They speak of the obsession with glamour, youth and sex; they tell of isolation and helplessness. The girl seems to represent the vulnerability of the young urban Chinese generation that is caught between opposing Chinese and Western cultures, between tradition and modernization.

The images also refer to Zhang Peng’s own pain of growing up in China. Zhang Peng grew up in the eighties, the post-Cultural Revolution era that was a very harsh time in China. The work deals with Zhang Peng’s own childhood and his feelings of helplessness during that period in his life.