Derived from ancestral photographs, Zhang Xiaogang’s contemporary Chinese portraits in painting and sculpture have been widely exhibited and celebrated over the course of the last decade. In his paintings from the 1990s and early 2000s, aptly titled the “Bloodline” series, influences from surrealist and symbolist movements are distinctly evident. The subjects are rendered not realistically, but like hazy caricatures against unspecified backgrounds. After the Bloodline works, Xiaogang began experimenting with sculpture, finishing his first series of painted bronze works in 2013, cast in small editions. These sculptures were based off of the same prototypical characters from his paintings in three-dimensional form, recognizable in their features. For example, in the present lot, the subject’s thin-rimmed rectangular glasses recall the same accessory which adorns a repeatedly painted character from his Bloodline paintings in 2005. This work, entitled Young Man showcases a gaunt-faced boy on the brink of adulthood, rendered in beautifully varied hues of gray with cool purple and blue undertones. Cast in perfect symmetry, the bronze is covered in active brushwork that gives a painterly effect entirely different from his refined painting practice, a casting style influenced by Tang glazes and the polychrome sculptures of ancient Egypt. An emotionless gaze evokes the uncertainty of adolescence, while the man’s torso stands rooted on an artist-made plinth with a stature of feigned confidence. An example from the edition exhibited at the artist’s second show at Pace Gallery in 2013, Young Man is a paradigm for Xiaogang’s unique ability to capture a single moment in a long human life, rendered in the simplest of shapes and compositions.