Zhang Huan "Blessings"

The Pace Gallery (534 W 25th St)

poster for Zhang Huan "Blessings"

This event has ended.

Giant No. 3 (2008), a colossal 15’ figure made from cowhides, steel, wood, and polystyrene foam is on view. Zhang Huan’s notable performance work, documented in photographs, has evolved into painting and sculpture, often blurring the lines among different mediums. Giant No. 3 consists of a small figure ascending the body of a larger pregnant one, relating the piece to My Rome, a 2005 performance Zhang Huan held at Palazzo Nuovo at the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Clad in a sarong, he climbed, caressed, and reclined on the colossal 2nd-century marble statue of the river god Oceanus (“Marforio”) in the famous Italian courtyard.

Along with Giant No. 3, new works from the artist’s Memory Doors series will also be on view at 25th Street. In this series, Zhang Huan utilizes discarded wooden doors from traditional houses found in the Shanxi Provence. To create the series, the artist makes large-scale copies of photographs with themes ranging from military or labor to everyday life, pastes them to the surface of the door (one of the many historic examples of this traditional practice were the indictments and arrest warrants outlining crimes against the state which were pasted to the doors of offenders during the Cultural Revolution). Large swaths of these photographs are then torn off and the image replicated in exactitude by carving the scene, in relief, into the surface of the door. As the artist states, there is a long tradition of applying something to the surface of the doors, “It could be an image of the god of wealth, the god of love, and it’s just to bring good luck and good fortune or to somehow protect from the evil spirits. So this is part of the Chinese tradition. And this is very, very important for Chinese people; as poor as you might be, you still need to manage to pay someone to write those tributes, so that you can put them by the doors, so people can see them. This is something crucial to the respect of every family.”

During the run of Zhang Huan: Blessings new large-scale, unique woodcuts by the artist will be on view at Pace Prints Chelsea, 521-523 West 26th Street. Zhang Huan’s Tui Bei Tu, No. 2, 2006, a large original woodcut of a deer with feather additions, is also part of the current group exhibition Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now at The Museum of Modern Art, New York through July 28, 2008.

Media

Schedule

from May 09, 2008 to July 26, 2008

Artist(s)

Zhang Huan

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    Reviews

    lasa: (2008-06-08 at 08:06)

    Dynamic baby(?) and meticulous wood works. Both are worth seeing.

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