Xu Zhen / China

China born 1977

Combining replicas of a famous Buddhist statue and Greco-Roman, Renaissance and Neoclassical sculptures, Xu Zhen’s monumental installation brings together Eastern and Western cultural heritages to create, in the artists own words, ‘a new form of creative culture’ that he hopes will help bring about understanding and appreciation across cultures. As the basis of his work Eternity-Buddha in Nirvana, the Dying Gaul, Farnese Hercules, Night, Day, Sartyr and Bacchante, Funerary Genius, Achilles, Persian Soldier Fighting, Dancing Faun, Crouching Aphrodite, Narcissus Lying, Othryades the Spartan Dying, the Fall of Icarus, A River, Milo of Croton, 2016–17, Xu uses the colossal form of a reclining Buddha dating from the High Tang Dynasty (705– 781 CE). More than 14 metres long, the original was built into a man-made grotto, the Nirvana Cave, near the wealthy and cosmopolitan Chinese city of Dunhuang, situated at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road.

At the western end of the famed trade route, artists created sculptures devoted to the gods and heroes of Greek and Roman mythology. Each of the figures Xu cast to pose or lean on and around the great Buddha has its own colourful history, such as the famous Dying Gaul, an ancient Roman marble, itself a copy of a lost Greek bronze original.

Bringing cultural traditions together is Xu’s way of breaking down barriers. As he writes of his remarkable work, ‘I have always been curious about the differences between cultures and the alienation between them. And yet, misconceptions can be the beginning of awareness and understanding’.

BIO

Xu has worked across video, photography, performance, painting, sculpture, installation and curation. He won the China Contemporary Art Award in 2004 and participated in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2009 Xu established MadeIn Company, a contemporary art corporation focused on creative production and devoted to ‘the research of contemporary culture’s infinite possibilities’. In 2013, MadeIn Company launched the brand Xu Zhen.