The characters in the ancient paintings "Ranger Map" and "Lady You Chuntu of the State of Yu" "broke into" the colorful silk scarves, and the mysterious Sanxingdui civilization and the totem of the Miaoxiang ethnic minorities attracted people's reverie... A few days ago, Zhang Baohua, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, made his solo exhibition "Spring Silk" in Beijing, bringing together Zhang Baohua's hand-painted silk scarf artworks in the past thirty years, using silk as a carrier to tell the contemporary story of an ancient civilization of a thousand years.
Artist Zhang Baohua
Since his youth, Zhang Baohua has formed a fate with textile art. In 1990, Zhang Baohua graduated from tsinghua university's academy of fine arts (formerly the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts) majoring in dyeing and weaving art design, and later worked in Beijing Printing and Dyeing Factory and Beijing Fashion Institute. In the early years, he saw foreign designers integrating Chinese cultural elements into their designs at textile fairs abroad, and lamented that China lacked designs with its own characteristic culture. "Our deep cultural fertile soil has not been excavated enough."
"Since I am teaching in this area, I might as well try to explore the use and expression of Chinese culture in textile design." In 2003, after returning to the Mainland after further study in Hong Kong, Zhang Baohua began to create the "Silk Road Journey" series. He collected a large amount of historical materials on the Silk Roads and visited Dunhuang, Xi'an, Luoyang, and many places in Gansu and Xinjiang for inspiration. He was deeply shocked by this trip, "In the desert flying sand, there are traces of history everywhere, which is a treasure more precious than we imagined." ”
Zhang Baohua integrated the ancient murals and excavated cultural relics patterns seen in the collection style into his own creations. However, the creation is not to copy the traditional culture, but to "jump out of these materials and think about how to use the language of modern design to organically integrate these elements of different time and space to form a design logic." He believes that traditional culture is fluid and active, and under the premise of absorbing traditional cultural elements and maintaining the original charm of traditional culture, only by transforming it into a realistic product that conforms to contemporary aesthetics can traditional culture gain long-term vitality.
Over the years, Zhang Baohua has traveled to many parts of the country in search of traditional culture, of which Guizhou is one of his frequent places. "As early as 1995, I went to Qiandongnan to collect wind and stay for more than 50 days, where I felt the culture of ethnic minorities and walked very carefully. At that time, I also bought some batik embroidery, and the pattern on it gave me a lot of inspiration. His "Bird Cage Building Dreams" was inspired by Danzhai batik embroidery, "The images of these birds are particularly decorative and vivid." I have been to Guizhou more than a dozen times, and every time I go, I feel that traditional culture is inexhaustible. The more I dug into it, the more I felt that it was unfathomable. ”
Zhang Baohua's works exude a strong Chinese charm and are combined with international fashion design trends, and have won many awards in domestic and foreign design competitions, among which silk scarf works on topics such as tea, giant pandas, and Miao culture have also been given to foreign guests by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a national gift. "When many foreign friends receive silk scarves, they feel that Chinese silk is too precious, and at the same time, they also think that the pattern design is very peculiar." He insists on hand-drawn creation, and in the collision of the pen tip and paper, he pours out his thinking and exploration of traditional culture.
From the antique Chinese classical patterns in "Nine Clouds of Cranes" and "Lotus Ruyi", to the cute giant pandas in "Bamboo Bush Dream Awakening", and the vivid and cute folk toys in "Big Instrument Play City", Zhang Baohua has continuously broadened the expression of traditional Chinese culture, showing the beauty of traditional Chinese folk art, the beauty of color, the beauty of craftsmanship and the beauty of allegory. "I hope to continue to use design to convey goodwill and beauty, revitalize traditional culture, and let art truly enter life."