This is not a piece that one casually glances at. The sculpture has three gigantic, thick legs, two of them balanced on thin stilts, in a contorted, back-bending image of the Buddha. The third leg and foot are resting atop the upper half of an eight-foot-high head, which has eyes closed. The top edge of the sculpture is rough like mountain peaks.<\/p>\n
Three-Legged Buddha, Storm King Art Center<\/strong><\/p>\n Zhang, born in 1965 in the Henan province of China, created this sculpture in 2007. Initially a performance artist known internationally through his edgy, provocative, and haunting works, Zhang has immersed himself during recent years in traditional art practice, specifically sculpting a series of monumental artworks depicting the fragmented extremities of Buddhist statues, according to The Pace Gallery, the artist\u2019s dealer in New York and Beijing.<\/p>\n Of Destroyed Monasteries<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThree-Legged Buddha\u201d is a moving and dramatic sight, all the more so when one understands the source of Zhang\u2019s creation. Zhang set about to make these sculptures after a visit to Tibet in which he found fragments of religious sculptures, which had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, for sale in a Tibetan market. Deeply moved by the sight of these fragments, Zhang started to collect them as relics, with an intention to transform them in some way to art, according to Art Knowledge News<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The Tibetan people and their culture suffered immensely during the 1950s and 1960s at the hands of China\u2019s government under Mao Tse-tung, especially when the Chinese authorities suppressed Tibet\u2019s 1959 uprising and during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Chinese groups supporting the Cultural Revolution and some Tibetans who joined them pillaged and destroyed thousands of Tibet\u2019s Buddhist temples and monasteries. Tibet contained more than 6,000 monasteries at the time of China\u2019s invasion in 1950. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, fewer than a dozen were left.<\/p>\n Zhang sensed a mysterious power in the fragments that he found in the Tibetan market, knowing of the religious and historical meanings embedded in them, explains a Pace Gallery release on another of these Buddha works, \u201cThree Heads Six Arms.\u201d In re-creating the fragments on a large scale, the artist believes he can help assuage the pain caused by the original destruction. In a series of these large sculptures based on the smaller fragments, Zhang has combined various body parts \u2013 legs, arms, hands, and heads \u2013 to personify Buddhist deities.<\/p>\n Being With… Being present with Zhang\u2019s sculpture engenders many sensations, some disturbing and some inspiring. It has undeniable strength and muscularity, especially in the legs, which are alive with spirit. And yet, the posture of the sculpture and especially the legs seem contorted, like a world twisted by harsh events.<\/p>\n Looking at the sculpture\u2019s brokenness, reflecting the fragments that Zhang found and embodied in the upper half of the head that is under the weight of one of the legs, I consider how religion and spirituality become targets. The authorities, exemplifying the worst aspects of man\u2019s nature, tried to silence and kill spirit in the form of Tibetan Buddhism, literally trying to break it apart in the monasteries and temples.<\/p>\n This, the sculpture says to me, is a world where man tries to crush another\u2019s spirit. It is one where the soul threatens the order of worldly power and so the rulers must put it down, tear it apart. It\u2019s trauma by brute force, one repeated in many cultures and different times around the globe.<\/p>\n![\"Three-Legged](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4135\/4907850687_516cbb7e08.jpg\")
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