ASH BANQUET

On display are five Ash Paintings, works laden with spirituality (Buddhism is a vital part of the artist’s life) and created with ash, perceived not merely as a simple material but a sort of soul, memory and collective blessing.

The technique is meticulous: the artist gathers together the ashes from dozens of temples around the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region, then separates them out according to their colour and grain size, sprinkling them onto the surface until he obtains the image he has in his mind; then he fixes it on a linen cloth.

For the artist, Italy has a wealth of works by the great masters; an endless source of artistic inspiration that lies at the roots of Ash Banquet, inspired by one of the masterpieces of our Italian artistic heritage – The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.

It’s the artist’s tribute to the city of Milan, explains Elena Geuna, curator of the exhibition held last year at the PAC: “After his important retrospective, the artist was fascinated by The Last Supper; the consistency of the incense and the special technique used by Zhang Huan lend the da Vinci iconography a new degree of spirituality, that brings to mind an ancient, intimate and universal sacredness. The works of Zhang Huan aim to express a modernity instilled with tradition, a universal spirituality that brings together East and West, past and present, in a dialogue between different cultures and religions.”

The other works exhibited show a strong relation with Chinese culture and are inspired by the history of Chinese people. Characters form old pictures, portraits of well-known people, images of the Cultural Revolution as fragments of history reconstructed by the artist who lived these moments himself.