Zhang Huan: Ordinary Life

Zhang Huan’s work across multiple media is inspired by the everyday processes of life— from breathing and eating to hopes and dreams. In 2006, Zhang began a series of paintings made from ash collected in Buddhist temples near his studio in Shanghai. The ash is created by incense sticks burned as prayers, often for good health, luck, and prosperity. This exhibition gathers eight ash paintings on linen that recreate twentieth-century photographs in the artist's personal library on a grand scale. The anonymous figures, absorbed in thought, are reminders that the ideas of everyday people have revolutionary power but are nonetheless impermanent, passing through history like dust in the wind. As the artist summarizes, “Art should be about daily life, which has lots of parts. It is mundane and ordinary, but it is also dramatic and theatrical.” 

A devout Buddhist, Zhang begins his painting process with the collection of vats of ash from temple complexes. These remnants of religious rites and personal prayers are sorted by value and hue by a team of studio assistants, who then use the medium to reproduce images chosen by the artist from his collection of photo albums and picture books purchased in local markets. He is particularly interested in themes of military, labor, and daily life that appear in propaganda publications and family archives. The resulting canvases are both personal and collective, real and false. He invites us to engage in careful observation and meditation on the interconnection of spiritual and material aspects of his practice. 

Zhang Huan is one of the world’s most vital and provocative artists. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, and many other museums around the world. Recent solo exhibitions include Zhang Huan’s First-ever NFT Art Trilogy at Echox (2022), Living Toward Nothingness at Pace Gallery (2021), and Zhang Huan: In the Ashes of History at The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia (2020). This is his first solo exhibition in Kentucky.