Zhang Huan

signed in Chinese and Pinyin, dated 2000, and numbered 22/25 on the reverse, framed

Chambers Fine Art, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

alternate edition exhibited:
New York, Luhring Augustine Gallery, Zhang Huan, 2001
Toronto, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Zhang Huan, 2001
Santiago de Compostela, Museo das Peregrinacions, Zhang Huan, 2001
Paris, Galerie Albert Benamou, Zhang Huan: Family Tree, 2001
Yokohama, Yokohama 2001: International Triennial of Contemporary Art, 2001
Hamburg, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Zhang Huan, 2002, pp. 80-81
Quebec, Musée de la Civilization, Skin Talks, 2002
Bochum, Bochum Museum , Zhang Huan, 2003
Berlin, Galerie Volker Diehl, Zhang Huan, 2003
Copenhagen, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Zhang Huan, 2003
Massachusetts, Peabody Essex Museum, Family Ties, 2003
Lucerne, Museum of Art Lucerne, Me and More, 2003, pp. 74-81
Rovereto, The Trento and Rovereto Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Skin Deep, 2003
Warsaw, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Witness, 2004, pp. 34-41
New York, International Center of Photography, Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, 2004, p. 140

Zhang Huan, Xunta de Galicia, Cotthem Gallery, 2001, pp. 84-85
Zhang Huan, La Mirada Ajena, Basque Museum of Contemproary Art, Spain, 2002, pp. 58-67
Art Tomorrow, the Body and Identity, Editions Pierre Terrail, Paris, 2002, pp. 196-197
The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004, p. 39
Zhang Huan, Phaidon Press Limited. London, UK, 2009, p.93, 122 and 123

These works are generally in good condition. Please note that they were not examined under ultraviolet light and out of their frames.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Concept and Photography
Transformation of Chinese Contemporary Art in 1990's

Conceptual photography (or experimental photography) played an important role in the development of contemporary Chinese art in the 1990’s. In the 80’s, the influence of Western artistic movements was concentrated on traditional media of fine arts such as oil painting and sculpture, while Chinese photography remained primarily documentary. In the following decade, photography with a strong conceptual basis began to flourish, foregoing pure documentation and becoming conceptual art in its own right. The emergence of the artists’ village of East Village in Beijing signalled the potential for photography as avant-garde art, and the current of conceptual photography engendered there in the mid-90’s would continue into the new millennium.

In the early 90’s, non-mainstream young artists in China began to adopt photography as their creative medium. Working on the fringes, these avant-gardists used photography as an expressive means, but they also used it to observe and record other artists’ lives and work. These photographers played a particularly important role in documenting Chinese performance art of the 90’s, allowing it to be disseminated and exhibited. Derived from performance art, these photographs deeply influenced the development of photography in the 1990’s. Soon photography was no longer simply documentation of performance, but became a legitimate tool for expressing artistic concepts. The current of Chinese conceptual photography thus created has been the frequent subject of international exhibitions. The four lots on offer are all representative works of Chinese conceptual photography: documentary photographs of Ma Liuming’s performance art piece Fen-Ma Liuming Walks the Great Wall; Zhang Huan’s conceptual photographs Family Tree, taken during his time in New York; documentary photographs of Song Dong’s performance Stamping the Water; and Yin Xiuzhen’s Yin Xiuzhen.

In these four works, we see the different directions taken by photography in contemporary Chinese art. It can be conceptual art in its own right, they can serve as documentation of performance art, and can also be turned into largescale installations. Each form has taken on its own artistic life. Though striking an outsider’s stance, photography flourished in China from the 90’s onwards and blazed a path for a whole generation of Chinese artists. It is an indispensable part of contemporary Chinese art in the 1990's.

The emergence of Beijing’s East Village is an important milestone in contemporary Chinese photography. It gathered a group of brilliant performance artists, whose works were documented by Rong Rong, Xing Danwen, and others. The conceptuality of performance art had an important impact on the art world of the time, and inspired more Chinese artists to take up the photographic medium. Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan are both representative artists of East Village.

Ma Liuming graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Hubei Academy of Art and arrived in Beijing in 1993. Along with Zhang Huan and Zhu Ming, he became a core early member of Dongcun. The three quickly became the most internationally renowned performance artists of China in the 90’s, forming an important current in experimental Chinese art. In 1993, the British artist duo, Gilbert and George, went to Beijing for the opening ceremony of their solo exhibition at the National Museum of Art, after which they were invited on a tour of East Village. On that occasion, Ma Liuming took off his clothes to perform a piece later called Dialogue with Gilbert and George. This was the first piece of performance art by a East Village artist, and set East Village artists on a determined pursuit of this art form. In the same year, Ma Liuming created the “Fen-Ma Liuming” performance series, and extends this performance in almost all his later works. In this project, Ma dresses and makes himself up as a woman to become his alter-ego “Fen-Ma Liuming.” The Chinese character fen, or fragrance, is a homophone of the character “divide,” indicating the feminine role as a part of Ma Liuming’s self. Documenting his performances with photography, Ma uses his own body as a creative means and challenges viewers’ pre-determined concepts of gender as well as foreign audiences’ conventional opinions about the Chinese body. For his daring avant-garde, Ma has been apprehended many times by the PRC Public Security, but has also attracted the attention of foreign media and the art world. The lot on offer, Fen-Ma Liuming Walks the Great Wall (Lot 925) is one of the most well-known works by the artist. It documents his 1998 performance of walking naked along the Great Wall outside Beijing in his female guise as Fen-Ma Liuming, challenging Chinese tradition and social rules, full of a young artist’s rebelliousness and avant-garde fervor.

Zhang Huan like Ma Liuming was a core member of the East Village. Zhang Huan was also a main representative of Chinese performance art in the 90’s, and has been invited to create performance in various countries around the world. His most famous performances at Dongcun included Twelve Square Meters (1994) and 65 Kilograms (1994). Zhang’s medium of expression is his own body. After moving to the US in 1998, Zhang began to produce conceptual photography in addition to performance art, turning photography from a documentary means into an expressive one. The lot on offer, Family Tree (Lot 923) of 2000, is one of the conceptual photographs Zhang created in New York, and it is also one of the most compelling photographs in his career. For Family Tree, Zhang invited three calligraphers to spend an entire day repeatedly writing Chinese characters on his face until they covered it entirely in black. The artist hoped that this work would “tell the story and the spirit of a family”. The characters were various names and quotations from the Chinese classics, serving as a metaphor for Chinese tradition which was rewritten into oblivion. Family Tree touched upon the issue of modern Chinese national and cultural identity. It expressed the artist’s own reflections on his identity while living abroad in New York, and also reflected the challenges faced by contemporary Chinese artists in the 1990’s, as they tried to make a mark in the international art world. The married couple Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen began their artistic activities in the mid-90’s. They are not only partners in life, but also soul-mates in their creative endeavors. Although they usually present their works individually, we can still recognize their dialogue and common interests, such as their shared focus on the rapid changes in Chinese cities in their early careers. They have exhibited at Chambers Fine Art in New York three times under the title Chopsticks, and have respectively presented their installations for MoMA Projects. They are also frequent participants at large-scale international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel. Song and Yin are two of the most prominent conceptual artists in China, and photography is one of their main artistic medium.

Song Dong’s artistic practice ranges across many media, combining performance, photography, sculpture, installation, etc. He is very interested in process and transformation, and many of his works investigate the transience of  aterials and its many kinds of significance. Stamping the Water (Lot 924) from 1996 combines his previous Water Diary (1995) and Breathing (1996). Together they are Song’s most memorable and compelling works on the theme of water. Water Diary documented the artist’s performance, which was to write his diary on a piece of rock with water and a brush repeatedly. Water’s poetic quality becomes the intellectual medium of art. Breathing was another performance: Song Dong exhaled for forty minutes on the ground under an advertisement in Tiananmen Square, and on the frozen surface of Houhai lake in winter. Whereas the lake was completely unaffected, the ground in Tiananmen Square was left with a layer of ice, but by the next day the ice had melted, and Song Dong’s efforts were ultimately in vain. Stamping the Water was created for the “Water’s Protectors” art festival. The lot on offer is the photographic documentation of that seminal performance, thus extremely precious. The performance took place in Lhasa, Tibet. Song Dong stood in the freezing Lhasa River and repeatedly stamped it with a large wooden stamp carved with the Chinese character shui (water). The stamp and the river together created a paradox: as the river ceaselessly flowed and changed, the stamping was destined to be futile. Through exploring the nature of water, Song Dong revealed the ephemeral nature of things in a manner evocative of Zen Buddhism.

Yin Xiuzhen’s works are distinct from her husband’s. Full of emotions, they revealed her sensitive characteristic even in the early phase of her career. In 1994, Yin began to create non-painting works of art, including a series of installations expressing her sadness about the destruction of Beijing, brought on by economic development such as Ruined City (1996), Transformation (1997), and Beijing (1999). These works were all reassembled from components of old Beijing buildings that had been torn down, but various presentations interpreted the theme in a multifaceted and profound way. The installations also reveal the artist’s concern with memory, which indeed has been a theme in almost all of her art. Aside from the collective memory of people or a city, Yin Xiuzhen has also created a series of works about personal memory, showcasing a uniquely feminine sensibility. Through clothes, shoes, furniture, photographs, and other personal items, Yin ably leads the viewer into a woman’s desires and private thoughts. An example is Yin Xiuzhen (Lot 926), an installation from 1998 titled after the artist herself and preserved in the lot on offer. The installation was to be part of the exhibition “It’s Me!” at the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing, but (it never opened) because the authorities did not approve of the exhibition. Since the installation is now only preserved in photography, the lot on offer is of tremendous value. In the installation, Yin Xiuzhen processed photographs from various stages of her life in different colours and put them into traditional cloth shoes. While reviewing her own past through these shoes, Yin also reflected more generally on women’s status, and room for self-expression within the patriarchal society of traditional China.