Zhang Huan: Sydney Buddha

Overview

Zhang Huan lives for the ephemeral. The Shanghai-based performance artist has made a celebrated, controversial career from moments of fleeting intensity — from having mangled doll parts and red liquid poured over him at Beijing’s National Art Gallery, to calligraphing his entire family tree all over his face and using fish and honey to attract flies to his body from his childhood village’s public toilets. Yep, intense. But in recent years, the artist has found a new Buddhist-infused means to find enlightenment in the temporary — and we get to join him this summer at Carriageworks.

Zhang Huan’s Sydney Buddha (presented in conjunction with Sydney Festival) joins the Carriageworks program in 2015, if only for a limited life. For this highly-anticipated work, two, five metre tall Buddha sculptures made of 20 tonnes of incense ash and its aluminium case, will face each other. Made of incense ash collected from Chinese temples (and set to disintegrate slowly within Carriageworks) acting in the same way a Tibetan Buddhist mandala works — a stunning, complex, time-consuming artwork to be briefly enjoyed and subsequently destroyed, reminding us of the brevity of life.

Sydney Buddha will sit in the Carriageworks public space from January 8 until March 15, available to view from 10am-6pm daily.

Zhang Huan will speak about his work ‘In Conversation’ at Carriageworks on Thursday, January 8 at 4pm. Tickets are free and currently waitlisting, available here.

Image: Zan Wimberley — Zhang Huan, Sydney Buddha, 2015, ash and aluminium. Presented by Carriageworks in association with Sydney Festival, courtesy PACE Gallery, New York.