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The Zhang Huan show ‘Dawn of time’ opened last night at Shanghai Art Museum.
The various important art world people in Shanghai were out in force, peppered with a few celebrities such as Kong Dong and the Shanghanese stand up comedian chap, who made a speech.
Pearl Lam made a speech, notably saying Chinese art will become the most important art in the world.
Zhang Huan’s speech was a crowd pleaser, he even spoke quite a bit of Shanghanese dialect, for comedy effect. “Shanghai is like a woman, Beijing is like a man,” Zhang said. He has two more shows soon in Beijing, and one in Taiwan.
The show itself is definitely worth a look, though sparse, the key piece I liked was a large brick bell tower with a pig blowing smoke into the room, quite a dramatic showmanship flourish there for Zhang. There are also several of the large Longhua Temple ash paintings aka Zhang’s re-renderings of old cultural revolution photos, a cow mutant work (rumour has it the piece that got this show canceled last year), and a pile of bricks. Zhang noted the museum guards were confused by the pile of bricks work. “Its rubbish” they told him.
He then reflected on how the work represents society and its various issues.
In related gossip, apparently the Shanghai biennial will be in October, a Gao Shiming enterprise.