Zhan Wang: My Personal Universe

While scientists turn to the Large Hadron Collider to examine the universe’s origins, 39-year-old Beijing artist Zhan Wang takes a more contemplative approach. The love child of the artist and his backer, Louis Vuitton, 'My Personal Universe' marks a new point in what Zhan calls his artistic ‘road’, surpassing anything he has done before. And yet, in the last month, it has undergone something of a devolution.

Dominating the interior of one of the UCCA’s halls until mid-January stood four wall-like screens. Inside this enclosure (subtitled ‘Outer’), visitors were greeted by 7,000 glittering, meteorite-like steel rocks, strung out like a giant baby mobile. The only light came from the screens, which showed a super-slowed video of a boulder Zhan had blown up somewhere in Shandong; six screens played out the blast from different angles. It reached into your chest in a deep, drawn-out rumble – this was the dawn of the universe.

Now the hall is silent. Gone are the screens, which expanded the six-second explosion to three minutes. The sculptures, however, which were moulded upon actual debris from the explosion, have been re-arranged to resemble the first millisecond of Zhan’s man-made Big Bang (subtitled ‘Inner’). The arrangement still links it to the demolition – the fine details from the fragments visible on the moulded metal – but by reference only.

Before, this piece engulfed the viewer with image and form. Now the rocks stand alone, capturing the exact moment they were broken apart by tremendous forces. On the surface, at least, this piece now gets much closer to the simplicity it strives for. Less fun for the casual viewer, perhaps, but there’s a purity to the work now, which the screens to some extent obscured. After all, the aim was always to induce contemplation – amid the pizzazz there was little room for thought.

Yet this exhibition still remains impressive. The sheer scale and glittering, eye-catching blues and silvers are unprecedented in the artist’s work. Zhan has never shied away from using contemporary, flashy materials, even celebrating them to some extent; here, his use of steel draws us back from the dawn of time to the modern age. If this kind of scale and use of mixed media marks a new path in the artist’s journey  – or ‘road’ – it will be interesting to see what he does next. Clare Pennington



Originally posted in Time Out Beijing