Zhang Huan

Co-founder of the artists' group "Beijing East Village", Chinese performance artists Zhang Huan caused a real stir in the 1990s with his disturbing interventionist actions, videos, and installations. Often using his own body, his presentation of themes specific to China, such as doctrinaire family planning, over-population, and mass migration from the country into cities soon attracted the ire of the state guardians of culture. Today, Zhang Huan lives between New York and Shanghai. Elements of his own traditional Chinese culture have since melded with Western ideas, Christian symbols, and Occidental art history. For the last two years, Zhang Huan has focused exclusively on drawings. In his large-format "Images of Imagination and Desire" (ink and wood-cuts featuring traces of ash and soy sauce) people and above all animals enter into a significant and often bizarre game with their own, forever metaphorical identity - and our imagination.