Zhan Wang - BRIC London Thursday, April 14, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Long March Space, Beijing

  • Catalogue Essay

    “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’.”
    (Alice Wang, ‘Zhan Wang: Master Sculptor’, ArtZine, A Chinese Contemporary Art Portal)
     
     
    Full incision: 
    ‘The New Sky Patching Project In 1516, a rain of meteorolite landing on South of China, in the middle of the earth. In 1958, One of siderolite on 680kg weight was found. In 1992, This meteorolite was carried to Beijing Planetarium for collection. In 2001, an artiest Zhan Wang was planning to use the stainless steel to copy and take it and was arranging to send it back to outer space.’

12

Artificial Rock

2001
Stainless steel.
114 × 89 × 33 cm (44 7/8 × 35 × 13 in).
Incised in Chinese and Pinyin and dated ‘Zhan Wang 2001’ and numbered of 8 one of the sides; further extensively incised in Chinese and English. This work is from an edition of 8.

Estimate
£70,000 - 90,000 

BRIC

14 - 15 April 2011
London