Zhang Huan: Sydney Buddha
Another major installation Berlin Buddha (2007), conceived specifically for Haunch of Venison's exhibition space in Berlin, consists of a Buddha made from compacted dry ash which is seated opposite the aluminium mould from which it has been cast. At the mercy of its environment and with no glue to bind it, the ash Buddha slowly disintegrates in a manner whose significance is threefold: formally, it returns to the artist's process-driven ash cubes of the year before; symbolically, it invokes the desecration of centuries-old artefacts under Mao Zedong; and, metaphysically, it enacts a conceptual reduction of being to nothingness which accords with the artist's religious beliefs. His most ambitious ash work to date, Berlin Buddha represents the concise and poetic crystallisation of Zhang Huan's current preoccupations.
Zhang Huan's ash works perform exhumations of private lives and social histories in which ideas of collective memory and experience resurface. In the charred topography of these recent paintings and sculptures lie the silent prayers of the current generation from which, like a phoenix rising, the past may be reborn.
Source: Zhang Huan's website
Please note that while the text above refers to the Berlin Buddha, the image is of the Sydney Buddha
Zhang Huan: Sydney Buddha
Another major installation Berlin Buddha (2007), conceived specifically for Haunch of Venison's exhibition space in Berlin, consists of a Buddha made from compacted dry ash which is seated opposite the aluminium mould from which it has been cast. At the mercy of its environment and with no glue to bind it, the ash Buddha slowly disintegrates in a manner whose significance is threefold: formally, it returns to the artist's process-driven ash cubes of the year before; symbolically, it invokes the desecration of centuries-old artefacts under Mao Zedong; and, metaphysically, it enacts a conceptual reduction of being to nothingness which accords with the artist's religious beliefs. His most ambitious ash work to date, Berlin Buddha represents the concise and poetic crystallisation of Zhang Huan's current preoccupations.
Zhang Huan's ash works perform exhumations of private lives and social histories in which ideas of collective memory and experience resurface. In the charred topography of these recent paintings and sculptures lie the silent prayers of the current generation from which, like a phoenix rising, the past may be reborn.
Source: Zhang Huan's website
Please note that while the text above refers to the Berlin Buddha, the image is of the Sydney Buddha