Zhang Huan
Long Island Buddha, 2010-11
Copper, 12’ 11" x 48" x 43"
(393.7 x 121.9 x 109.2 cm)
Courtesy the artist

The unexpected and haphazard placement of a large-scale Buddha head, seemingly flung into the ground, connects Long Island Buddha in style and iconography to several other works in the exhibition which are inspired by fragments of Buddhist statuary destroyed during China’s Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. As Zhang has said, "I collected a lot of fragments of Buddhist sculptures in Tibet [beginning in 2005]. When I saw these fragments in Lhasa [the center of religious life in Tibet], a mysterious power impressed me. They’re embedded with historical and religious traces, just like the limbs of a human being."