 was not expecting to meet Zhan Wang in the hall of the studio that day. Like a scholar coming out of his study, he was quiet, natural and calm. It was hard to imagine that this was the very artist who gained recognition in the 1990s working with rock and stainless steel—producing his famous conceptual sculptural series of hollow Mao suits and fake stainless steel rocks and pumices.
 His conceptual sculptures have been exhibited in numerous countries including Italy, France, Japan and Singapore. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has also recently acquired one of his fake stainless steel rocks—making him one of the first contemporary Chinese artist to have a work in the Museum’s permanent collection.
When Zhan Wang talks about art, he references abstract notions like thoughts and concepts over critical remarks. He comments on art saying:“The best art should be accurate and irreplaceable. I do not regard my works as purely sculptural. I am doing contemporary art.”
Fond of drawing since childhood, Zhan Wang spent three and a half years studying sculpture at Beijing Industrial Arts College. With his instructors trained in the Soviet style of sculpture, his early years of study followed in this manner. He recounts this experience saying, “The Soviet School, namely the traditional school of sculpture was what I studied most at that time. I didn’t get in touch with modern master sculptors like Augustin Rodin and Henry Moore until after graduation.”
Although his department specialized in industrial art, he expanded his awareness of art by taking courses with teachers from the Fine Arts College and even spent time practicing his drawing skills in Buddhist temples, copying Buddha figures.
Art and conceptual thought seem to be the permanent theme of Zhan Wang works.“Since I got trained in a more traditional way, I have to depart from the past if I want to create some worthy works. I have been mulling over what the goal of art is and what problems it can solve,” he said. “In fact, the ultimate goal of art should still be to satisfy man’s spiritual needs. But for me at that moment I felt I had never thought it over on my own.”
 He added:“If I get stuck thinking technically rather than conceptually, my mind will be confined and my advancement hindered.” As time progresses, Zhan Wang will no doubt find new concepts to translate into sculpture.
The earliest of Zhan Wang’s significant works date back to 1988 when he was working in a more traditional manner, borrowing techniques from western masters. He first began to experiment in a surrealistic approach in 1990. “With this approach I could create a new dimension in the world. This has little to do with what I learned before, and it helped me start afresh. It enabled me to see the world in a conceptual rather than technical way; I discovered problems by way of conceptualizing, creating art was a means to expresses my thoughts. Of course it is still a process, a process in the art of learning from trends where you’re still imitating others.”
During this time, Zhan Wang was renting a studio at Dingfu Village in Beijing with his colleagues Sui Jianguo and Yu Fan.“We’d make a living doing jobs on the side, driving about town in a jeep. We worked on a piece and discussed it, and you know practice and discussion are interactive. We wanted to know just what art was,” Zhan Wang says, “then in 1995, we had a breakthrough idea of creating fake rocks. This one moment of inspiration must have been linked in some way to the discussions we had held over the years.”
Zhan Wang conceived the idea for the Mao suit series in 1993. Like any work of art, the suit series underwent a sequence of changes. They were initially quiet in nature and became increasingly violent, the Mao suit squeezed the human figure and deformed it. It became a contorted hollow suit with the figure being drawn away, virtually crying and struggling in vain. The sculptor’s own inner struggle is vividly represented by the outer changes of the series.
 “It occurred to me that I could use the phenomenon of the cicada to metaphorically express my thought at that moment. Like the cicada, Chinese people, who live in a time of chaos, have to abandon their cast and metamorphose into a new life form, their feelings, sad compassions and playful wrongdoings are all intermingled to confuse the situation,” Zhan Wang says.
In 1994, a group exhibition of the works of five artists, including Zhan Wang, heralded the genuine incorporation of Chinese contemporary sculpture into modern culture. Although the critics felt their works were far from the Western notion of modern, Zhan Wang believed one should not evaluate a work in terms of its association with western arts. He furthers this by saying:“I believe only Chinese works are of any real significance to us.”
Zhan Wang formed the notion of his idiosyncratic fake rock in 1995. He had found that traditional Chinese artificial rocks placed outside the entrances of new skyscrapers formed an interesting juxtaposition between old and new.To him, these rocks were fragments of the western industrialized world that had been imported into Chinese society. Despite China’s attempts to modernize, traditional Chinese culture had undergone no fundamental change. This was enough to inspire Zhan Wang to create a series of fake rocks fabricated from stainless steel. Although their surfaces project a dazzling and cold industrial light, their forms were still Chinese in nature. As critics have remarked, Zhan Wang’s rock series is a “dialogue between new technologies and cultural traditions.”
 Born in Beijing in the early 1960s, Zhan Wang had witnessed many of Beijing’s transformations over the decades.“My art practice was moving at almost the same pace with the changes of urban Beijing," he says. "The true moment of industrialization came with the reconstruction of Wangfujing in 1993. I had an intuition that many traditional ways of life would be changed. Many of my art works were concerned with these changes; the changes of Beijing spurred me to work.”
It is this very sensitivity and concern with the impact of the changing world that make his works significant. His combination of industrial materials and conceptual ideas draws you into his works.Though his works may not be considered to be pleasant to the eyes, you feel compelled to examine them in full. One can realize that despite the industrial feel, they are still rich in tradition.
A later development spurred from his fake rock series is the New Meteorite Sky-Patching Project, currently exhibited in the show hall of the Xichang Satellite Launching Center. The New Meteorite Sky-Patching Project is a bold idea that incorporates the sculptor’s own reinterpretation of an ancient Chinese folklore in which he hopes to launch stainless steel meteorites into space to restore order to the universe.
 Twelve years have elapsed since Zhan Wang’s acclaimed exhibition of sculptural art in 1994. No other work can summarize his exploration in art over the past decade better than the Buddha and Drug Hall in the 2006 Shanghai Biennale. This work conveys a spiritualized and purified experience for the viewer; it draws you into a sacred and serene world. The Buddha, which was made entirely from medicine tablets, sits in a capsule-like cave. This capsule-like cave which also resembles a Buddha niche-like space can be seen as a place where man can get treated both physically and spiritually.
“I have been pursuing a work which can combine man’s dual needs into a whole, and this is just one example which represents a relationship between man’s material and spiritual experiences. For instance, you may associate a drug with the treatment of illness; while seeing the Buddha may bring about spiritual thoughts or spiritual healing of sorts.. The integration of material and spiritual has a soothing effect on the viewer,” said Zhan Wang. According to him, Chinese expect their material needs to be met via religious worship, while Westerners simply pursue a spiritual purification, entirely separate from material aspirations. His serious account of the source of inspiration for a work of dualism again attests to his ideas of art practice: to pursue conceptual thinking rather than technical.
Zhan Wang is currently preparing an outdoor art exhibition to be held at Zhangjiang of Shanghai this November. He is busy planning all aspects of the exhibition. "Many things are involved in this process, beginning with the conception of a new art work, finalizing its drawing, to the organization of the necessary craftsmen who will make it, you have to bustle around every day,”he says.
His latest work, Electronic Gods Hall, allows you to touch the screen and select a god from a complete list of gods compiled from all the religions of the world to worship. It is intended to express the notion of equality among all religions and all people. Beyond our general understanding of a  sculptural work, it combines sculpture, electronic devices and multimedia via technology to fashion a composite art.
“I’d like people to gain some renewed insight into sculpture by my own practice in pan-sculptural works, so that the sculpture can carry some cultural meaning. Of course it needs my whole life’s practice to demonstrate it.”This is the idea or belief which has allowed him to remain original and persistent in his quest for understanding art.
Zhan Wang has recently finished a book on rock collections entitled, "Xin Su Yuan Shi Pu", or "New Natural Garden Rock Record." Although it was a reproduction of ancient culture, it is filled with contemporary art as well. An attempt to discuss the exploding value of contemporary art works in the current market was unsuccessful, Zhan Wang says.“Lets not talk about this. I think at my age we should still honestly engage in our work, it’s not a time to promote the market price of our works. Price means nothing!”
Translated by Huzhu
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