Zhang Huan<\/a><\/strong> is patrician, aloof and mercurial, first distant, then charming, with a self-deprecating wryness. His eyes sparkle, or perhaps glint; his humor, sharp and dry. There is an air of a tiger aware of hunters. Part performance, one must play along without knowing the rules. Born in 1965 in Henan province, Zhang is younger, just, than all his equally famous contemporaries, who together have come to define contemporary art from China. (2)<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe is still best known for his early actionist works of endurance, of masochism, self-abasement and abnegation, provocative certainly but also absurdist, the most famous being \u201c12m2\u201d (1994), in which he enclosed himself in a filthy, sweltering latrine, naked and covered with honey and fish oil, flies crawling over him. The photograph shows him, in profile, expressionless but somehow heroic, against the corruptions that besmirch him, metaphors for altogether filthier social and political corruption. But not passive: he leaves the shack and walks into the neighboring lake, fully immersing himself in its cleansing water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a while though since Zhang Huan has used his body for his practice. In 2006, after eight years in New York, he returned to China, not to Beijing\u2019s East Village where his artist career began but to Shanghai, where he established an art factory on the outskirts of the sprawling city, employing over 100 people. The huge enterprise seemed estranged from the asceticism of other performance artists, such as Marina Abramovi\u0107, Tehching Hsieh and Vito Acconci (well, even Abramov\u00edc\u2019s \u201cAn Artist\u2019s Life Manifesto\u201d dinner-performance in 2011 at MoCA, Los Angeles was Satyriconesque).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here Zhang developed a new practice with two related but distinct directions: wall-based works and sculptural\/installation works. The wall-based works were either his now seemingly ubiquitous ash paintings or \u201cMemory Doors,\u201d tableaux expertly carved into weathered Chinese doors. The installation works have been fewer but no less prominent, usually involving towering theatrical scenes, and in one case a theatrical production of Handel\u2019s opera \u201cSemele<\/strong>\u201d (2009). Often there are giants, a Madonna and Child made of cow hides, a pair of garish stainless steel pandas for Expo 2010 (just cynical or was his heart not in it?), Buddhas and Emperors composed of ash, Confucius sitting in his bath, even Zhang\u2019s own avatar colossus \u2014 Zhang Huan\u2019s world is crowded with slumping behemoths, sometimes literally as the ash forms disintegrate. How small we are compared to them, yet compared to us, how fragile too \u2014 daunting but enervated. (3) There have been lots of animals too \u2014 cows (or at least their hides), pigs, donkeys and monkeys \u2014 all relating somehow to Buddhism, the situation and role of the individual in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n__________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Exhibition, \u201cZhang Huan: Q Confucius,\u201d at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Ai Weiwei (b.1957), Cai Guo-Qiang (b.1957), Zhang Xiaogang (b.1958), Yue Minjun (b.1962) and Zeng Fanzhi (b.1964).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. The complaint \u2014 it is too casual to be criticism \u2014 is that the ash technique has become a gimmick, a cash cow, for another of China\u2019s artist giants, just another Deng Xiaoping capitalist. Certainly the works are popular. The extravagant effort required to make them, the precision of their manufacture, their cinematic scale and presence make them very attractive. Just flick through leading style or fashion magazines and sooner or later you will find one of Zhang\u2019s ash paintings staring back at you. For example, \u201cBellevue von Manhattan\u201d in Architectural Digest<\/em> (Germany)[no. 134 (November 2012), p. 156] shows Diane von F\u00fcrstenberg at home in Manhatten, including Zhang Huan\u2019s portrait of her, which dominates the sitting room. In the portrait F\u00fcrstenberg looks frightening, vampiric. Her frizzy hair forms a cave from which her head emerges medusa-like. She wears good luck charm earrings, not recherch\u00e9 but atavistic. Through slightly opened lips we glimpse even lower teeth. This work was originally part of the 2011 Diane Von Furstenberg exhibition \u201cJourney of a Dress,\u201d at the Pace gallery in Beijing\u2019s 798 art zone, coinciding with fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh\u2019s exhibition \u201cThe Unknown,\u201d which opened during China Fashion Week at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. Enough said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCompare also Zhang\u2019s \u201cFresh Open Buddha Hand\u201d 2007, made of copper, with Dahn Vo\u2019s copper reconstruction of Eiffel\u2019s Statue of Liberty, the individual parts of which have been distributed around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His fame continued to grow, his prices continued to rise, and in the crammed but rapidly expanding universe of China\u2019s blogosphere, Zhang attracted criticism that, deserved or not, reflective or jealous, focused on personality rather than art. Yet in recent years he has had a series of striking installation exhibitions in China and his ash paintings have become a substantial body of work in their own right. Rather than seeing these practices in isolation it is time to gauge Zhang Huan\u2019s recent practice as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Mountain is Still a Mountain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis summer Zhang Huan had two major exhibitions of his wall-based works. The first was at the Art Gallery of Ontario and focused on Zhang\u2019s ash paintings and \u201cmemory doors.\u201d The second at White Cube gallery in London focused on a series of twenty recent ash works, The Mountain is Still a Mountain.<\/em> Composed of the sifted ash from incense sticks burnt at Buddhist temples in Shanghai, the ash is laboriously sorted according to the precise shades of grey or black, size and texture, and then meticulously affixed to a surface, such as linen. They recall the colored sand mandala floor-paintings of Tibetan monks, and the revenant prayers of ordinary people living in China\u2019s biggest metropolis \u2014 parents, students, office workers, teachers, cooks, policeman, migrant workers\u2026politicians? In a short video prepared by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Zhang describes the role of ash:<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen I returned to China from New York, in the temple I saw those good men and good women who burn incense to Buddha, and I began to wonder what kind of magic it was that affects us Chinese. People go there with hope to change their situation, to realize their dreams. Finally, when I saw the burning ashes in the incense burner, I suddenly had an epiphany, I realized that the burning ashes are not what they seem to be, they are our soul, our spirit, they are the memory and desire of a country. Everything we are, everything we believe and want are within these ashes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n