Zhang Huan

Description

One of the most important and innovative artists in China, Zhang Huan (b 1965) brought the burgeoning Chinese art scene to international attention in the 1990s. This monograph provides an analysis of the artist's career.

Reviews

One of the foremost artists in China's new wave, Zhang Huan creates personal and politicised work that encompasses performance art, photography, painting, installation and sculpture. Zhang Huan (Phaidon, GBP24.95), is a monograph assessing the impact of his explorations of identity, transgression and spirituality. It takes in his early, often extreme, performance art in China and New York - My New York (pictured), for the 2002 Whitney Biennial, saw him donning a suit sewn from raw beef, imitating the bodybuilders he had seen who tried to adopt an appearance of strength to hide their real weakness and unease - and takes us up to his laboriously created, deeply affected ash paintings and sculptures, created with incense ash collected from Shanghai temples. Metro, 10 June, 2009

Author description

Interview: RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, critic and curator who pioneered the study of performance art. Author of several seminal books, including Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (1979) and Performance: Live Art from the 1960s (1998), she is the Founding Director of 'Performa', a non-profit organization for the development, commission and presentation of performance art. Survey: Yilmaz Dziewior is a critic and curator based in Hamburg, where he is professor in art theory at the Hochschule fur bildende Kunste. Formerly Curator at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and Director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg, where he organized an exhibition of Zhang Huan's work in 2002, he is currently Co-Curator of the 7th Biennial Exhibition of Visual Arts in Limerick (2009). His writing has been published in Artforum, Camera Austria and Texte zur Kunst, as well as in numerous exhibition catalogues. Focus: Robert Storr is Dean of the School of Art at Yale University. Formerly Senior Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he directed the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 2004 and the Venice Biennale in 2007. He was a contributing author to Phaidon's Alex Katz (2005), Louise Bourgeois (2003) and Raymond Pettibon (2001), and writes regularly for numerous journals and magazines, including Art in America, Frieze and Parkett.

Table of contents

Yilmaz Dzwiewior is the Director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg and the artistic director of the 7th Biennial Exhibition of Visual Arts in Limerick (2009). RoseLee Goldberg is the Founding Director of 'Performa' in New York and an art historian and critic who pioneered the study of performance art with her seminal book 'Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present' (1979). Robert Storr is Dean of the School of Art at Yale University School. In 2007 he curated the Venice Biennale.