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impact in broadening the global dimensions of contemporary art has been immense. Themes of physical endurance and spiritual tranquility, Chinese history and heritage, and an interest in and reverence for Buddhism inspired his performative work of the past and continue to serve as personal and professional font for his paintings, prints and drawings, sculptures and installation works. While works of sculpture are central to his most current activities, including his iconic, large-scale copper sculptures based on fragments of Buddhist statuary, the artist’s now iconic ash paintings and highly innovative relief sculptures are also of great interest and import.
Although the artist necessarily travels the globe, the base of his endeavors is a sprawling yet highly organized, former industrial space about an hour’s drive outside Shanghai’s central city. Large spaces alternately hum with the activities of the artist and a few well chosen assistants, and those more pristine areas which allow the artist to present and contemplate recently completed work. But to call the site a more compelling environment. This is also an intellectual reservoir that houses a vast library on masters and monuments from across the history of art. This is also a quiet but astonishing home to a collection of fragments and ephemera of Chinese culture from both the more distant and more recent past. This is the base of thoughtful foundation of the artist’s every effort.
his parents sent him to live with his grandmother on a rural farm. Here, he developed a life-long respect for the traditions and customs of a complexities of modern life. Upon the death of the grandmother, he returned to city life with his parents. A consolation to the dramatic change in environments was that his artistic skills were discovered in elementary school and he was afforded both art lessons during the year and summer camp opportunities. His
draftsmanship in particular is grounded in such efforts. This considered, he went on to study art in Henan University in Kai Feng where the course of instruction focused on a tradition of representational painting that clearly echoed origins in a Soviet-style realism. Although the artist’s oeuvre would soon grow in depth and complexity well beyond this form of training, the garnered reverberate in dimensions that merit further study.
studies in oil painting at the Central Academy exposed to western forms of Contemporary art, including conceptual and performance art, its forms. He distinctly recalls the awakening exposure to avant-garde western artists like the American Kiki Smith. Following, three important, frequently interrelated, ideas take hold of his repertoire. First, he came to understand that the body, and in particular his body, could serve as the basis of his work. Second, and most closely allied, he recognized the great opportunities of performative work. Performance art came late Huan soon found himself at and as its epicenter. Finally, he began to take on politically charged themes that spoke of his own experience but also of a broader, rapidly evolving cultural experience.
impactful. The former, enacted before Beijing’s artist working with a red liquid to symbolize blood and a dissected plastic baby doll as and mandated abortions. The latter found the artist in a cramped public restroom covered
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