Zhang Huan

Max Protetch, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Santiago de Compostela, Museo das Perigrinacións, Zhang Huan: A Pilgrim in Santiago de Compostelo, 2001, pp. 126-127, another example illustrated in color

Britta Erickson, On the Edge - Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West, Stanford, 2005, p. 27, illustrated in color

This work is in a very good condition overall. There are no visible condition problems. The print is framed under plexiglas and was not examined out of frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Zhang Huan, arguably the most prominent performance artist from China today, was born in 1965 in An Yang City in Henan province. He received his bachelor's degree from Henan University in 1988 and his master's in painting from Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1993. Zhang was subsequently a member of Beijing's East Village community, a collective of artists living in a squalid neighborhood on the outskirts of Beijing. There from 1992 to 1994, Zhang became famous for his edgy physical performances, the photographs of which have become some of the best-recognized images of contemporary Chinese art.

The bizarre but poetic circumstances Zhang has orchestrated in order to create moments of sublime physical tension resonant with social commentary have contributed to his international recognition. In scenes that recall the attitudes of American performance artists in the 1970's, such as Chris Burden and Taiwanese expatriate Tehching Hsieh, among others, Zhang exposed his body to extreme situations and disciplined tests of physical endurance. Zhang was first invited to America as a participant in Inside Out, the 1998 exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at New York's PS1. After that, he remained in New York for several years but has since returned to China, establishing a studio in Shanghai that now employs more than a hundred people.

In one of his earliest performances, Twelve Square Meters (1994), Zhang sat for an hour in a filthy, fly-infested public latrine on a hot day while covered with honey and fish entrails. The photograph shows the naked artist displaying a fierce concentration, despite the fact that scores of flies are attracted to the emulsion coating his well-toned body. Zhang's determined stillness and endurance of his self-appointed circumstances demonstrate his resolve as a performance artist with a message. Twelve Square Meters embodies a critique of Chinese civic mores; the filthy conditions of the common public toilet are exposed by an artist whose calm acceptance of his state actually underscores his defiance of the status quo.

In 1995, Zhang and nine other artists collaborated on the well-known action entitled To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain. The ten artists removed their clothing—in most of Zhang's works, he and his fellow collaborators perform naked—and piled atop one another, momentarily increasing the hill's height by approximately one meter. Naked, lumped together in a common group, the ten participants make an odd and amusing augmentation to the mountain on which they lie. It is an arresting image, with the outlines of the bodies in repose echoing the taller mountains in the distant background. And yet there is a vulnerability in this pile of naked flesh, their anonymous identities and their absurd activity dwarfed by the expansive, timeless landscape that surrounds them.

Two years later Zhang created To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond. In this particular photograph of the performance, the hired itinerant workers make a long, straight line across the body of water. Most are chest deep in the water, but the two men nearest the camera pose in their colorful underwear; the solemn postures and sober attitudes of the men lend them a dignity that rises beyond their circumstances as anonymous day-laborers and the peculiarity of this particular day's work. Indeed, the performance is a meditation on the fate of the Chinese worker, who has moved to the city from rural fields and whose labor has facilitated China's explosive economic development. Yet here they work in large number to achieve only the minimal, purposeless impact of the work's title. Zhang's performance is a poignant study of fate and the way it is played out in China today.

My America (Hard to Acclimatize) (1999), was a ritualistic performance at the Seattle Art Museum that incorporated a considerable number of people. In this work bread played a central role, and at one point the artist is bombarded from all sides by loaves and broken bread thrown by his collaborators. The work stems from Zhang's having been offered bread by an anonymous New Yorker in Madison Square shortly after his arrival in the United States and his subsequent understanding of the function of soup kitchens. One photograph of the performance shows a row of people standing on a U-shaped platform that encircles an area in which several rows of people wearing white gloves prostrate before the camera. A second photograph shows Zhang front and center among the several rows of his collaborators, both men and women of various ages, who stand before the scaffolding. My America reminds us of our common humanity, which creates bonds across class, race, and culture. As Zhang has stated in conversation, this insight can best be understood without the constraint or defense of clothing, a point he has emphasized since the beginning of his career.

The final work on offer, Seeds of Hamburg (2002), documents in twelve photographs a performance in which Zhang was coated with honey and sunflower seeds and placed in a large, chicken-wire cage with twenty-eight pigeons. Assuming different poses over the course of the performance, Zhang was a magnet for the birds, which pecked at his food-covered body. At the end of the action, Zhang emerged from the cage and released a single bird; this final act calls to mind the Buddhist injunction to do no harm to sentient creatures and the merit conferred upon those who assist them. The Hamburg location of the performance is significant in its reference to Joseph Beuys (1921-86), who once taught in the city and also deployed honey as a symbolic medium in his work (as a conductor of warmth and life's energies).  Indeed, the shamanistic character of Beuys' oeuvre is a precursor to similar qualities one finds lyrically expressed throughout the work of Zhang Huan.

Like Beuys before him, Zhang Huan is intent upon embodying life forces in performances whose enduring visual appeal is matched by the richness of interpretive possibilities they pose.  Although Zhang has recently embraced a wide variety of other media and claimed that his days of performance are behind him, his performance work remains a landmark achievement in the history of Chinese contemporary art.

-Jonathan Goodman