Zhang Huan
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Zhang Huan (born Jan. 3, 1965, Anyang, Henan province, China) is a Chinese artist known for both his early photographed performance art that often showcased his own naked body and for his later production of a great variety of large mass-produced objects.
Zhang earned a B.A. (1988) at Henan University, Kaifeng—where he worked as an instructor from 1988 to 1991—and an M.A. (1993) at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Along with other student artists he formed a collective in a slum of Beijing that came to be known as the East Village. This period was a dramatic time in Chinese history, culminating in 1989 in a series of protests and demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Like many Chinese art students of the time, Zhang was attracted to the avant-garde, but he had limited resources. Perhaps not surprisingly then, his expression took the form of provocative, transgressive performance art that was photographed.
For most of his performances, Zhang was nude, and he was often undergoing some painful experience, as in the piece 12 Square Metres (1994) for which he covered himself in fish oil and honey and sat motionless for several hours in a public latrine while insects crawled over him. He also initiated several group performances, such as To Add One Metre to an Anonymous Mountain (1995). In this piece Zhang and nine others gathered on a mountain peak, removed their clothes, and laid atop one another until they achieved a height of one metre. Other characteristic images of art made during this period included Zhang’s face and body covered with calligraphy, sometimes to the point of obliterating all skin surface. He was included in the influential New York exhibition “Inside Out” in 1998, and he lived and worked in New York City from 1998 to 2006. By that point he had grown tired of performance art and stated that he had run out of new ideas. He returned to China in 2006.
Zhang then began to focus on making sculptures, installations, paintings, and photographs. These he produced on a massive scale—with the help of about 100 assistants—in his studio, a 75,000-square-foot (7,000-square-metre) former textile mill on the edge of Shanghai. Under Zhang’s direction, his assistants turned out paintings made from varying shades of incense ash acquired from temples, massive sculptures of (mostly) heads covered with incense ash, assemblages that combined woodcarvings with photographs, a variety of prints, and stuffed animals, as well as giant copper hands in mudras and copper feet that recalled Buddhist statues. In 2007 Zhang was the subject of five major solo shows—two in Berlin, and one each in New York City, London, and Madrid. The following year his work—including the cowhide-covered sculpture of a pregnant beggar, Giant No. 3—was exhibited in New York City.