In the beginning, I was anxious and excited to see the his paintings since religion influenced Zhang Huan and I am Buddhist as well. However, my feelings were actually opposite of how I thought I would feel. I thought it was going to be about peace, but it’s totally the opposite! First of all, the paintings I saw were definitely NOT “Poppy Fields.” They do have that concept but it’s not as beautiful as it seems. Instead of poppies, there are heads in the paintings, specifically skulls. When I saw it from a far, I thought they were heads of dragons for because I thought of the Chinese background and the love for dragons. The eyes did freak me out a lot. I thought the colors were pretty, in the beginning. However, as I got closer to the painting, it shocked me and I felt really uncomfortable. It made me dizzy and scared by the weird eyes, colors, and the popped up paintings of some of the heads and colors.

I was so shocked to know it was about hallucination and used real incense ash in his paintings. The colors, repetition of the skull, the 3-D pop ups gave the negative feelings. I wonder what inspired him to create this painting. Why hallucination out of all the topics in the world. I wonder if he secretly did drugs or had an experience with hallucination, which was why he created this painting. I do agree with him that it does lead to death and the painting sends the strong message. I wonder why he made so many “Poppy Fields” paintings but with different colors.

How did you guys feel about the painting? Did you feel disturbed as I was when you saw the painting or was it just me? More importantly, do you like the painting?