Zhang Huan valuation
Made his name on endurance performance in Beijing, and now paints in temple incense ash.
Zhang Huan was born in Henan in 1965 and came up in the Beijing East Village in the 1990s, where the work was performance and frequently punishing — sitting naked in a fly-covered public latrine, being covered in honey and insects, adding his body to others in an attempt to raise the water level of a fishpond.
What a work by Zhang Huan is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Zhang Huan was born in Henan in 1965 and came up in the Beijing East Village in the 1990s, where the work was performance and frequently punishing — sitting naked in a fly-covered public latrine, being covered in honey and insects, adding his body to others in an attempt to raise the water level of a fishpond. After a decade in New York he returned to China and the practice changed substantially: since the mid-2000s much of it has been painting and sculpture made from incense ash collected from Shanghai temples.
What trades is photography documenting the early performances, and the later ash paintings, sculpture and works on paper. Those are effectively two different markets with two different buyers. The ash works raise a real condition question, because the material is inherently fragile and light, vibration and handling all act on it, and they should not be moved casually. Edition and print status on the performance photographs — vintage, later, edition size, signature — governs value entirely.
Anyang, the Beijing performances and the ash
Zhang was born in Anyang and studied at Henan University and then the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, taking the name Zhang Huan in the 1990s. 12 Square Meters dates from 1994, To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain from 1995, and To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond, made with forty migrant workers, from 1997. He moved to New York in 1998 and was in the Whitney Biennial in 2002.
Since returning to China he has worked in Shanghai. Long Ear Ash Head, of 2007, is a giant head in incense ash and steel, and Sydney Buddha, of 2015, set a metal Buddha opposite one made from more than twenty tonnes of ash collected from temples in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. For an ash work, the studio's record of its date and materials should stay with it.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
