Zhan Wang’s ‘Scholars Rocks’ have been installed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh as part of the China Now In Scotland year-long programme of activities celebrating the links between the two nations. The exhibition will also be shown at the British Museum and RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, as part of CHINA NOW, the UK’s largest ever festival of Chinese culture.

The renowned Chinese conceptual sculptor Zhan Wang explores opposing forces in his sculptures, fascinated by the meeting point between “traditional and modern”, “natural and manmade” and “illusion and reality”.

Zhan Wang's Scholars Rocks have a wide Chinese as well as international following. The origin of the Scholars Rock (Chinese call them Fake Rocks) lies in the Qing dynasty. Chinese people like to bring a Scholars Rock into their homes or gardens as an object of nature to contemplate. Small Scholars Rocks were often placed on a scholar's desk together with a brush pot and ink rubbing stone. They would be roughly cut out of semi precious stones such as marble or onyx and then buried in a stream of water for up to 50 years, the water eroding all sharp corners and giving the object an iridescent surface. These miniature “artificial mountains” are often used as a means of contemplating nature.

Zhan updates this practice by moulding sheets of stainless steel around a rock (sourced from quarries in Jiangsu Province), creating his own hollow, rock-like sculptures for contemporary urban spaces. By changing the natural material of a rock into an entirely manmade object, the mirrored surfaces of the jagged sculptures reflect and break up surrounding images turning “reality” into an endless series of shifting illusions. The rock’s reflective surface holds up a mirror to the viewer making ”man” rather than nature the object of spiritual contemplation.

Zhan Wang produced his first Fake Rock in 1995 as a reaction to the fast and often ill-considered process of urbanisation. He has exhibited extensively throughout China, New Zealand, France, Singapore, Italy and Japan. Continuing to practice in Beijing, as well as teach at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Zhan has participated in group exhibitions such as Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (1999), at The Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, the Shanghai Biennale (2000), Shanghai, and Open 2000, at the International Exhibition of Sculpture and Installations (2000) in Venice, Italy.

Further details can be obtained fromwwww.nms.ac.uk/scotland National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF

Article by Anna Baird