I did not get to go out to nearly as many places as I wanted to, but one place I did get to was The Asia Society headquarters and museum to see Zhang Huan's exhibit,
Altered States. I had seen an article in the New York Times a few months back about it, and it looked interesting enough.
He is a multifaceted artist, and very talented; personally I did not find his performance work as compelling as the other media, although he is primarily a performance artist. I should qualify that by saying that seeing photographs or video of a performance piece is a different experience from being there, so there's that, and that I still thought that some of the performances and photographs were enthralling. The sheer nutballery of his meat suit alone was worth the suggested donation price of admission.
And really, it was overall mostly good, it's only that some of it was just stretched too conceptually thin for my tastes (Window, for example, seems to me a glorified Tijuana donkey show). The sculptures and prints were, to me, often more evocative. I'm only sorry that the space was too small to accommodate more of his very large-scale work, like his giant prints or sculptures. Also, I'd just love to see more of the work. The ash sculptures were beautifully textured and powerful while being still, and the beaten tin Buddha hands and feet looked like lovely artifacts. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that he has a whole stable of assistants actually making much of the work; part of me wants to hate it but another part realizes that there's no way he could create as much work or as large work if he didn't have a great deal of help. Overall, some really great art, I'm happy to have seen it. |
