Zhan Wang

Zhan Wang (Chinese: 展望; pinyin: Zhǎn Wàng; 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.

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.

His style concentrates primarily on abstract forms, which he calls floating stones, which are large, highly textured rock-like pieces coated in chrome. They are also called mountain or scholar's rocks. Wang refers to the series, which he began creating in 1995, as Artificial Jiashanshi. Many of Zhan Wang's works concentrate on abstract forms, that go by many names such as floating stones, artificial rocks, or the must famous, scholar rocks. These are large, highly textured rock-like pieces coated in chrome. These rocks are also known as Scholar Rocks. In the Chinese culture, the rock holds a high value; rocks have been thought to possess the purest qi, or vital energy, and collected as objects of art and tools of meditation. 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:

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