PaceWildenstein
534 W 25th St
212.929.7000
This event has passed.
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Zhang Huan, Ash Skull No. 14, Courtesy Pace Wildenstein Gallery
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- When
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Opens Thursday May 8, 2008 (6–8pm)
May 9, 2008 – July 25, 2008
Tuesdays–Saturdays (10am–6pm)
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Note: This is a two-venue exhibition also held at PaceWildenstein's 545 W 22nd St location.
For Zhang Huan and his Chinese art-boom contemporaries, coming from rigid, egalitarian China to its antithesis — the ego- and market-centric Western world — must have been quite the switch. Far from elated, though, Huan is dead serious. Stopping short of Chris Burden-style suicidal grandiosity, Huan's quasi-religious, ritualistic performances have involved his own naked body being rolled in honey or birdseed and martyred to a swarm of flies or a flock of pigeons. Blessings' centerpiece is a more sober sort of performance: a "painting" of Chinese canal laborers composed entirely of ash and measuring a jaw-dropping 5' x 19' x 59', which is still being "painted," in situ, by Huan's assistants.
