SHANGHAI, June 18 — Shanghai’s Long Museum is set to host the largest solo exhibition to date of works by Zhan Wang, a leading Chinese contemporary artist whose practice is firmly rooted in his culture.
Primarily a sculptor, Zhan Wang, who lives and works in Beijing, also uses mediums including performance, photography and video to create works that examine history, traditions, the spirit and the natural world.
For the show at Long Museum (West Bund), titled “Forms in Flux”, galleries have been opened into cavernous spaces that will showcase the artist’s latest works, in which he examines the shaping and transformations of forms in his surroundings. The result of collaborations with scientists, and incorporating methods of computational fluid dynamics and 3D output, these works are said to project forms into a virtual environment.
Covering the artist’s earlier works as well, the show will begin with a look at the “Mao Suits” series from the 1990s, as well as his well-known “Artificial Rocks”, sculptures that simulate eroded rocks long revered by Chinese scholars.
In the 2000s, the artist began addressing the reflection of the human figure and the effects of changes in conditions such as light and movement, which led to the making of “morph” and his “Metamorph” series. In the more recent solo exhibition “My Personal Universe”, Zhan Wang used dynamite to artistically recreate the Big Bang — a project that will likewise be highlighted in the Shanghai retrospective.
“Zhan Wang: Forms in Flux” runs June 25 to August 22 at the Long Museum (West Bund). On June 25, the artists will be among guest speakers at a lecture titled “The Boundary and Future of Art”. — AFP-Relaxnews
