Zhang Huan’s Hope Tunnel Opens at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
BEIJING.- Zhang Huan is one of China’s best-known performance and conceptual artists. He is also known for his shocking and absurd photographs and images. For his solo show at the UCCA, Zhang Huan will exhibit remains of the train which crashed during the 5.12 Earthquake in Sichuan and stretch it over the whole Big Hall exhibition space.
“This exhibition is a way of showing the victims of the Sichuan earthquake that they haven’t been forgotten. It’s a curated social project, an artist and an institution working together to help solve a problem.
- Zhang Huan, Hope Tunnel. Work in progress, 2010. Courtesy of the artist. Zhang Huan Studio, Shanghai. Photo: Zhang Huan Studio © 2010 Zhang Huan
Art isn’t about making pretty things, putting on spectacles and not showing any concern…it has to give something back” says UCCA Director, Jérôme Sans
Zhang Huan (born 1965, Henan) studied painting and taught art history in Henan but switched to performance art, seeing it as a way to interact with the world. His body became both his medium and his language. In the 1990s, Zhang attracted notoriety and the government’s censorship for his unsettling works, which involved subjecting his naked body to pain or torturous circumstances. After Zhang moved to New York in 1998, he walked down the street with slabs of raw meat tied to his body creating the image of a giant walking piece of meat. His works of self-expression have also earned much acclaim.
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