Page 117 - Beyond Compare Christie's Hong Kong RU WARE .pdf

han Wang is one of China’s most important contemporary conceptual artists, producing
Zsculptures, installations, performances, photography and video. In his early works, the
artist created hyper-realistic sculptures that explored his personal experiences, perspectives, and
observations about society and politics. After entering his celebrated Artificial Rock period, he
further focused on the transformation of sculptural forms, combining concept with technical
skill to create his dramatic mirrored stones. In that light, the Artificial Rock series represents
a fusion of human invention with natural form. In the third stage of his artistic career, Zhan
Wang revisited the essence of sculpture; for his Morph and Forms in Flux series, he transformed
distorted images into sculptures, combining man and rock. At the same time, he used mathematic
formulae to create amorphous three dimensional shapes inspired by nature. First exploring the
essence of sculptural form and then transcending it in his return to and re-examination of nature,
Zhan Wang has never wavered in his scrutiny of beauty (fig. 1).

In this special Evening Sale, we are proud to present a work from Zhan Wang’s iconic Artificial
Rock series – Artificial Rock No. 94 (Lot 8011). The artist began working on the Artificial Rock
series in 1995, creating sculptures out of stainless steel that are modelled after real stones. Works
from this series now reside in the collections of renowned art museums such as the Metropolitan
Art Museum in New York and London’s British Museum.

The Artificial Rocks take on numerous shapes, but all of their forms harken back to the concepts
of “fineness, spirited energy, porosity, and translucency” that are central to rock appreciation by
scholars in ancient China. These “strange rocks” symbolize the wonders of nature, while also
referencing the similarly irregular yet elegant aesthetics of classical Chinese calligraphy (fig. 2).
More importantly, they also remind us of the infinite variety of rocks that surround us in our
natural environment.

Mi Fu, one of the four great calligraphers of the Song Dynasty who held the title Professor of
Painting and Calligraphy by royal appointment, was famous for his obsession with rocks, to the
extent where a story of him visiting and conversing with rocks has entered historical legend
fig.1 Zhan Wang, Form in Flux No.4, 2017 (fig. 4). The ancients’ love of rocks stems from a sense of respect and awe for nature – the study
ॱˏ ൢᕦǗ㢓ྋ ǘ ໝη and examination of the natural world’s aesthetics have given Chinese artists and scholars great
Courtesy of the artist and Long March Space, Beijing
appreciation for the shapes and wonders of stones. The physical form of a rock can hint at the
noncorporeal, their limitations can reveal the inexhaustible, and the fact that they are frozen in
time also reflect eternity. Their austere sharpness and demure colours are also symbolic of great
personal character.
Artificial Rock No. 94 presents us with a universe of detail. Physically it has an energetic side that
conjures up images of rugged mountain ranges and soaring peaks, but other areas are smooth
and calm, with the quality of a running stream’s gentleness and crystalline clarity. Tang poet Bai
Juyi wrote in The Rocks of Taihu Lake that the best stones contain “alpine ridges, caves and grottos,
views of the world, condensed in one; sights near and far, present and past, presented to you.”
Dynamic undulations and intricately interwoven negative spaces make Artificial Rock No. 94 a
microcosm of all the world’s wonders. The framework of abstraction, metaphors, and symbolism
that ancient Chinese scholars applied to rocks reveal a sophisticated understanding of man’s
relationship with nature that is surprisingly modern and very ahead of their times.

Zhan Wang borrows elements of the Western approach to contemporary art and combines them
with an innovative use of material in order to redefine an object that is intrinsically Chinese. Viewers
may see in his works the enduring resonance of ancient Taihu rock, or think of Zhan Wang’s
sculptures as a contemporary extension of the ancient practice of rock-viewing and appreciation.
But the gleaming surface of an Artificial Rock would be jarring and alien among a traditional
Chinese garden’s natural stones. In that regard, Zhan Wang’s work serves as a link between the
traditional and the contemporary worlds. The way in which the artist meticulously and obsessively
tries to reproduce the original rock reflects an attempt to reconcile the differences between those
fig. 2 Zhan Wang, Artificial Rock No.54, 2003 worlds. Since 1995, the artist’s efforts to create Artificial Rocks has never been about replicating the
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Courtesy of the artist and Long March Space, Beijing genuine article; instead, by creating an inseparable connection between the subject matter (the real)
and the work (the reproduction), the artist establishes a new aesthetic order that is characteristically
Chinese. Similar to Jasper John’s Flag (fig. 3), the Artificial Rock becomes a symbol of a collective
consciousness. Spanning across the two domains of sculptural art and conceptual art, Artificial Rock
W Zhan Wang in his studio, ൢᕦ
Artist/ Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Long March Space, No. 94 thus exists in an intriguing dream-like dimension of ambiguity and duality.
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