Architecture’s Inscriptions brings together works by contemporary architects and artists alongside ancient Chinese manuscripts, rubbings, scholar’s rocks and paintings, exploring various forms of synthetic poetics grounded in inscription. Zhan Wang's Artificial Rock No.99 (2007), a scholar's rock using the industrial medium of molded sheets of stainless steel to calque the topographic surface of a traditional rock, will be on display in the exhibition.
His series of stainless steel Artificial Rocks, begun in 1995, has garnered international acclaim and has been collected by institutions around the world. These works are based on an object symbolic of China’s past, the scholar’s rock, which was traditionally collected by the literati and placed in courtyards or other sites of private contemplation, such as studies. Zhan Wang’s stainless steel reinterpretations of this form draw attention to China’s shifting value systems and the reconstruction of its urban centers. These highly reflective works not only utilize the ubiquitous building material of his native country, but also reflect in a mirror-like fashion the rapid urbanization of modern-day China and its ongoing realignment with the natural world.
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