Cartoons provide an escape – be it as an adult seeking an hour of redemption or children fleeting to unparalleled, untouched universe. Thankfully, Zhang Gong’s latest exhibition, ‘The Watcher’, at the Klein Sun Gallery in New York, allows you to experience your favourite caricatures and cartoons like you have never seen before.
The latest solo exhibition from the Chinese artist and animator Zhang Gong features an eclectic body of work that he has been developing since 2012. His expressive forms of figurative style combines surrealism and pop culture through the use of emblematic characters from a host of animated movies and cartoons. His latest show features three new series of paintings that push his abstract work, and that of the iconic characters, to a more extreme milieu.
Zhang is best known for reimagining classic paintings by replacing all the people in focus with an ensemble of oddball characters to pay homage to cultural idiosyncrasies and the trends of popularity. For instance, ‘Sister Pan’s Café’, featured in the exhibition, fills Edward Hopper’s iconic ‘Nighthawks’ dinner scene with a rabble of animated figures from Disney, The Simpsons and South Park. The original sense of isolation and film noir is maintained, but just ever so slightly enhanced with a dusting of cartoon notoriety.
Take a closer look at the exhibition in the image gallery below and be sure to pay a visit to the exhibition at the Klein Sun Gallery in New York which will run until the 19th August 2016.
Images courtesy of Klein Sun Gallery.
