Zhan Wang

Zhan Wang (; born 1962 in Beijing) is a Chinese sculptor.

"Zhan Wang's career as an iconoclast began with In a Twinkling (1993), an installation of superrealist figurative sculptures. The figures' style was not new, but the method of installation was: after creating a group of figures in poses of arrested movement, he propped them in unlikely positions outside a building, creating a surrealistic vision of a world gone awry," wrote Britta Erickson in Art Journal.

He is known for being a contemporary Chinese sculptor; however, he is also known in other art forms such as installations, photography and video. His pieces consist of conceptual ideas where he "embraces and subverts several other major traditions in modern art, both Chinese and Euro-American". Many of his works include the use of simplistic object that serve a purpose of telling a complex idea. Many of his ideas that are expressed through his works pertain to Chinese culture. In 1993, he was featured in his first exhibit and since then he has been showcased in over 125 exhibits, 24 of which were solo exhibitions. His last exhibition was "My Personal Universe" in 2012.

Education As a child, he was interested in art. Later on, he got a formal art education in 1978 at Beijing Industrial Arts College. His instructor there was specialized in the Soviet style of sculpture that he primarily what he studied during this time. Then he went to study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1983, where he studied in the Sculpture Department. It wasn't until after he graduated from the art schools that he then started to get into modern sculptors. Wang refers to the series, which he began creating in 1995, as Artificial Jiashanshi. His fascination with the concept of the rock may have led to some of his most famous works or maybe the placement of artificial rocks outside the entrance of modern buildings in China. It is seen that even though China was going through change in modernizing the world around they still held on to parts of the traditional culture. He wrote in 1966: Placed in a traditional courtyard, rockery satisfied people's desire to return to Nature by offering them stone fragments from Nature. But huge changes in the world have made this traditional ideal increasingly out of date. I have thus used stales steel to duplicate and transform natural rockery into manufactured forms. The material's glittering surface, ostentatious glamour, and illusory appearance make it an ideal medium to convey new dreams. This was the emergence of two eras that Zhan Wang thought "formed an interesting juxtaposition". The concept of the rock or maybe the placing of rocks outside these modern builds lead to the creations of Zhan Wang, which are known as the "artificial rocks". Zhan's scholar rocks takes the concept of new technologies and cultural traditions for a modern collaboration. However, he considers these works authentic and depiction of Chinese history in postmodern world. Though Wang was the artist behind the project he had help. Many steps were taken to get the end results. The process in which he took resulted in the use of a camera crew of 32, six high-speed cameras that took 2,000 frames per second, an explosion technician, dynamite, one rock, picking up of 7,000 pieces, recreating each piece out of stainless steel, rearranging them in the pattern in which they landed, and the amount of time it took to reassemble "his universe". The cost exceeded $63,000; that alone was the price to rent cameras for the project. However, Louis Vuitton supported the project. In return, he was able to create "My Universe – The Beginning". Video Clip on My Personal Universe

Louis Vuitton Since Louis Vuitton supported Zhang Wang's "My Personal Universe", he was in return able to create a video instillations "My Universe – The Beginning". It was showcased in Beijing for Louis Vuitton's "Louis Vuitton Voyages", a show that helped express their journey and progress as a brand at the National Museum of China.

Urban Landscape: Beijing An arrangement of stainless steel cooking ware that has the appearance of Beijing's Landscape. Zhan Wang keeps the forms of the cookware so the viewer can tell that they are still everyday objects. However, through his arrangement he creates conceptual idea of the Urbanization of China and essentially the imagery of Beijing's landscape. As John Stomberg states:

"His materials are both objects of desire and physical manifestations of the systems (social, political, cultural, and economic) in which they operate: it is precisely the trade in commodities such as cooking tools that is fueling the booming Chinese economy, which is in turn driving the modernization of China's cities. In the work there are many of the same cookware, which represents the urban life of Beijing where many of the buildings are identical to one another." He created a large outdoor sculpture for The DeYoung Museum in San Francisco that was unveiled in 2005.

For his "On Gold Mountain" exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, located in San Francisco, in 2008, he used rocks selected from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to create his sculptures, "alluding to the nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant experience of mining gold during the California gold rush. Both the actual rocks and their stainless steel versions will be exhibited", according to the museum. He also created as city-scape of San Francisco using all steel items, such as rocks, mirrored surfaces, silverware, and stainless steel pots and pans.

Timeline 1962 – Born in Beijing China 1978–1981 – Beijing Industrial Arts College 1983-1988 – Sculptor Department at CAAC 1991 – One-artist show CAFA gallery 1995; Member of sculptor research 2006; Zhang Wang: Urban Landscape 2006; Martell Artist of the year 2011; Louis Vuitton Voyage 2012; My Personal Universe

Quotes "The best art should be accurate and irreplaceable. I do not regard my works as purely sculptural. I am doing contemporary art." – Zhan Wang

"If I get stuck thinking technically rather than conceptually, my mind will be confined and my advancement hindered." – Zhan Wang

"My art practice was moving at almost the same pace with the changes of urban Beijing," – Zhan Wang

"In China, he says, modernization is associated with the West: when China modernizes, it westernizes." – Zhang Wang