Zhang Hongtu

Zhang Hongtu’s survey at the Queens Museum reveals a conflicted portrait of a Chinese-American personality, one that has personally rejected Mao but revels artistically in the Chairman’s influence and memory. Across multiple rooms, an abundance of Maos—cross-eyed Mao, smiling Mao, frowning Mao—is juxtaposed with Zhang’s hybridizations of Eastern and Western imagery and aesthetic movements.

The collection presents Zhang’s work from the 1950s through today, and his range—materially and conceptually—is impressive. Guo Xi–Van Gogh, 1998, depicts the mountainous ranges of Guo Xi’s shan shui scrolls rendered in Vincent van Gogh’s post-Impressionist brush strokes. Front Door, 1995, is a door with a peephole through which one can view old footage of the leader, while The Big Red Door, 2015, is a hulking gateway dotted with phallic knobs. And a giant photographic print, Great Wall with Gates II, 2015, wraps almost entirely around the exhibition space. The show also documents the changes in Zhang’s work after he moved to America; since leaving China, his interests in the East have intensified. The humble drawings of his Chinese peers back home feel very different from the kitschy soy-sauce workers’ leaflets, glazed zodiac figures, and Chinese blue-and-white-patterned Coca-Cola bottles he made in the States.

Visitors are also encouraged to test out Ping-Pong Mao, 2015, a tennis table featuring two Chairman-shaped holes on either side. The sport seems frivolous, but it references the infamous Ping-Pong Diplomacy, a Chinese political tactic in the early 1970s where Mao invited the US table tennis team to China. This trip initiated early Sino-American relations and Zhang’s fruitful explorations of Chinese culture through an American lens.