zhang huan and performance art

Body art subverts all traditional definitions of art. When artists use their own bodies as an art material, normal distinctions between creator and created disappear. By becoming art themselves, they render disinterested aesthetic judgments of the art object absurd or irrelevant. Because the "artwork" is also a sentient, reasoning being, body art brings moral, ethical, and political issues into play.
-Eleanor Heartney from Huan's website

i came across this image recently in one of my art books. what really impacted me was the inclusion of tethered dogs in a performance that seems pretty intense to begin with. for me, it makes the piece even stranger and more provocative. the dogs are at once wild animals and yet domesticated. their indifference to both art and another's suffering intensifies the loneliness and futility of the performance. i've read that this piece was meant to reference huan's feeling of alienation in his new home of New York. in his futile attempt to warm the ice with his body, the reverse effect happened, and the ice drove his body temperature dangerously low. his ambitious intentions were thwarted by harsh reality at the risk of serious injury. the tethered dogs know nothing of this, the performance's meaning is lost on them. nor are they guardians for huan. they are there only because they are tied there. this strange coexistence is unsettling and not easy to resolve. it seems to be the personification of alienation and the feelings of impotence and futility that must surely follow.

fear: pt II

the mock-up below is a concept sketch for the "documentary painting project" i've begun to develop recently. i wanted to conceive of painting that was decidedly documentary, but at home with its stark differences with transient, material-based performances. in other words, it would reveal how documentation, if it's done right, is really it's own thing entirely. i don't mean to sever the ties to the original performance piece, but rather that there's really no way i can create an appropriate document for it. it's led me to consider how i'd paint a video still, say. more later...

but fear.... one of the inspirations behind Painting Complex was the tower of babel, which, for all of you not up on your biblical studies, was a tower meant to be so tall that it reached god. god became offended and gave humanity chaos as punishment. the chaos was different languages, leaving people unable to communicate with each other. i don't know if the tower actually crumbled, but it seems like it should have. in any case, this seemed to me a perfect metaphor for human ambition gone too far.

countless examples throughout history could also be invoked. any once great civilization that has gone into ruin, and left behind actual ruins. inevitable collapse, death, suffering has always been very difficult for me to reconcile. i think one reason why this piece worked was my introduction of play for issues otherwise so weighty. my use of paint made my actions even more inevitably ruinous, which compelled me to be even more urgent (uh-oh...this is going to go south fast, so i better get as much splattering done as i can. come on! go! aggghh! paint in my eye! no time to stop! go go go!!!). i think this kept the piece from being an act of self-destruction.

fear

fear became a central theme for my work when i participated in the Land Arts of the American West program at UNM in 2002. i remember distinctly when. it was our first real campsite, not too far from the valley of the gods in Utah. our camp was on top of a mesa. one day when i ventured out for inspiration the thought occurred to me that anything could happen out here, including falling over the edge of the sheer cliffs. this thinking inspired my work Cliffhanger.

fear of falling is countered by a desire to climb. in such a litigative culture this is problematic when it comes to the body, but encouraged in the business of acquiring monetary wealth. ruin is the object of fear, and it is only possible through risk (which is also what you do when you play). one's body can be ruined by falling, and a wealthy culture can also fall into ruin. i find the divergent attitudes interesting.

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filling time and space, so...

new

the work on panel (shown in previous post) is very close to doing as much as i can do with the process and general approach i've set for myself. i can't get past the fact that this is still not enough to really connect with people. i think, fundamentally, this work is about my fears. it's what inspired the vine imagery (fear of entanglement), a sense of distant light (a goal to be reached), and the general sense of isolation (that one's pretty clear). in an attempt to make the work less dismal, i wanted to introduce color, which i think worked pretty well in the lithographs i made, but not so well in my early panel paintings. lately, i've veered more towards neutral, and i think the results are better, but my feeling is that i've gone as far as i'd hoped to get with these. i've reflected on my fears with this work, hoping all the while that the process will somehow help me to get past my fears, and it just might well have. at least the self-generated ones, which have been the most crippling and senseless ones.

a few months ago i committed myself to making 40 paintings on panel based on vine imagery and emphasizing directness of process. They were intended to be minimal, yet somehow i wanted to introduce some sense of humor, careful not to venture into self-parody. i think the latest few i did accomplished these things, but despite this apparent success, they seemed inaccessible. there was something important about this, i thought, and i believe that it is this inaccessibility that is at the root of my fears. fear of not being understood. fear of what would happen if i ever were understood (would i just become commonplace?). i then realized that this fear led nowhere, that i could do nothing with it. at this point i decided that whatever the reality is, i cannot do this to myself. i can't let myself be paralyzed by this fear. and then i realized that i had reached the end of this work. a premature end to my 40 paintings.

i think this work was important for me to make, even if i'm bringing it to an abrupt halt, which i promised myself i wouldn't do. it is a bridge, nearly five years in the making, between being a student and a professional artist. i reflected on my self-doubt, my worries, and my hopelessness for the future (of both humanity and myself), and then today i realized that my reflection on these things was an endless cycle. it would never change. it's a realization i needed to make to get myself out of the cycle.

amidst it all: 2 nu pics of blurry paintns