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Wang Zhong has taken an unusual journey in his sculpture creation, in which he set off from scholasticism and went to realism, and then came to current stage. However, it is not so easy to summarize his current creation by a conceptional "style", because his creation has gone beyond not only scholasticism, but also realism. Wang Zhong's art has been developed in practice. He neither pursues some set style or pattern actively, nor complies to some ideological trend or school, but develops his own art with the change of his life conception in his art activities, which has been taken as some kind of social practice. For this reason, although Wang Zhong's masterpieces have a strong sense of formality, spirit of humanities and social consciousness permeated among his masterpiece have beyond the form. If we just analyze the form of Wang Zhong's recent masterpieces, it can be summed up to Cubism or surrealism, or the combination of both the two. However, we have also noticed that modernism art, especially sculpture, is the reflection of the visual experiences and spiritual crisis in the time of industrialization. In the aspect of sculpture, developed from machine to architecture, from transportation and communication to electricity, modern industry has provided extremely rich consciousness of space and material to the conception of sculpture creation. It is not exaggerate to say that modern sculpture is a romantic praise for industrial capitalism. The effect that western modern sculpture has brought to Chinese modern art is mainly reflected in the aspect of value conception. That is to say, when Chinese artists began to follow on the way of expression of western modern arts, they could not have a real feeling of the effect of industrial time from a detailed experience like their image, the western artists in early phase. What the Chinese artists can do is taking the western modern art as a kind of spiritual symbolization to pursue their freedom of arts and realization of their self-value. This kind of phenomenon was quite a common one during China's avant-garde art movement in the 1980's. China's society has been marching to modern society quite rapidly since the 1990's. To modern arts, Chinese artists have got much more rational knowledge and practical experiences gradually, but not only pursuing to the value. Wang Zhong's art should also have been developed under such a background. Moreover, it is also because of such a background, we could have the conclusion that Wang Zhong's art could not be summed up to any set school. Wang Zhong has formed his own style and way of expression from his own experiences and his knowledge and understanding to modern arts. Therefore, we must first trace back to Wang Zhong's art process before we set off to analyze his art. Wang Zhong has solid efficiency and merits in realism profiling, depending on which he could have chance to obtain outstanding achievements in his urban sculpture creation. We can hardly integrate Wang Zhong's urban sculpture masterpieces with current style of his art, however, we can make out that his early creative activities has brought great effect to his latter work from at least two points. First comes out the concept of urban. The creation of urban sculpture link Wang Zhong closely to urban, including urban space, structure of urban architecture, demolishing of the old city and extension of the new city, etc, all of which have not only affected his visual experiences directly, but also affected his individual opinion on industrial civilization. Secondly, in his creation of urban sculpture, Wang Zhong has always sucked up the conception of architecture into his creation while he insists exploring his individual style. That is to say, when he began exploring his sculpture form, what affected him most might be architectural expression. No matter whether he himself has realized that point, it is this kind of practice that has directly led to the breakout on form and theme in his later creation. Wang Zhong's thematic creation has close relationship with architecture and environment firstly. However, he has not just used the architecture opinion from only the aspect of form, but inquired into the relationship between human being and history, culture and environment from the great conflicts brought by urban vicissitudes and civilization. This series of masterpieces created by Wang Zhong were named Old Beijing. We can draw from the title that his starting point is still realism, and he is organizing the subject matter and digging the theme by his own experiences and his focus on the actuality. Wang Zhong did not carry out common realism style in this series of masterpiece, but absorbed some elementary compositions in unit art, or environmental art. He revealed the theme clearly and profoundly in the masterpiece by combining the concrete sculpture of an old Pekingese' profile, with the ruins of ancient urban houses after being pulled down. Thus, "Old Beijing" has been outlined with double image of both ancient urban houses in Beijing and old Pekingese in the sculpture. The materials of the two images have a relation of mutual exchange: the ruins, which are taken as ready-made by natural materials, will be demolished and disappeared; while the human profile made by metal materials will be existing permanently. It is obviously that Wang Zhong's expression technique of utilizing public space as a measure of showing the masterpiece, even though the public space might not exist permanently, is related to his longstanding experience in urban sculpture creation. What is more important is that he has taken full advantages of the environment effectively to express a major issue in modern society, namely, the conflict between human being and civilization. The growing up of cities always pays a high price of destroying the old living style, which means what human being has lost at the same time is not only the traditional living homestead, but also their homestead for spirit longstanding. For this reason, Wang Zhong profiled a distressed old Pekingese in front of the ruins of the demolished old Beijing Hutong (alleyway) in his masterpiece. History of each individual is always composed by memory of personal life. Memory is always being materialized into concrete symbols. The old Pekingese lost his roof to live under, however, actually he even lost the life he once owned. The choice of materials used in the series of Old Beijing seems to have much profound meaning: environment is of natural pattern, which is mud-composed crumbing walls and ruined curbs; while character is of metal material. This kind of reversal contrast relation just symbolizes that human being is being materialized by industrial civilization while natural environment is being missed. The meaning of such kind of symbolization was embodied much obvious in the sculpture Removal Plan-1997, a piece of the whole series: natural pattern or natural intrinsic quality of the character is being lost and being alienated in to a pile of metal gradually. We should admit that the series of Wang Zhong's Old Beijing have embodied a new sort of proposition in form. However, there are still much more description to the show off theme than expected, although this series of masterpiece has been taken as a milestone in Wang Zhong's sculpture creation. Moreover, these masterpieces have another much important meaning to Wang Zhong that they might make him realized that modern sculpture expression is not only pure creation in form, that the meaning and proposition of reality are prime power and catalytic agent to the creation in form and style, which could make form and style obtain its real life and vitality. Wang Zhong once said: "I always believe that there exists some kind of spiritual things. I always hope that my work could suggest or expound some internal meaning out of the work itself. Therefore, I always could not rid myself of a sort of heavy mind during my process of creation." Once the proposition of reality has been transformed by form, the latter will carry some spiritual meaning beyond visual, and this is the other leap that Wang Zhong has made from his Old Beijing series to his recent masterpieces. In his recent masterpiece, Wang Zhong has realized two kind of abstract: one is abstract of the theme; the other is abstract of form. But both these two kind of abstract show off the integrity of both concern to reality and concern to ultimate at the mean time. Comparatively speaking, the series work of Old Beijing approach much closer to a direct description of individual experiences, but in the masterpiece of Life? (Finished in 1998), description of reality has been concealed, while Wang Zhong drew upon the "internal meaning" from his profound consideration to the reality, and obtained strong effects through the transformation of the form. The masterpiece of Life made from weld forged copper and iron plates has extremely strong visual stimulus, in which two iron plates split the outline of a person into two halves, and another iron plate in the middle supports a profile of an infant made from forged copper. Such strict symmetrical structure brings the audience great pressure, which comes from both the stimulus of form, and association of the image. The two quite heavy iron plates seem to form up an irresistible pressing power to the small and weak infant. Stimulus of the form and association of the image are just the set meaning of this masterpiece: the conflict between materialized human being and natural human being, and the former is the doomed destination of the latter. Form could not and does not exist isolated, metaphor symbolization has been made into integrity with modern sculpture expression, structure, space and materials, thus makes form become carrier of both culture and spirit at the same time. Wang Zhong's recent masterpieces show that he is a frequent user to express the themes in post-industrial time by modern sculpture expression. This is not only a significant jump in the development of his art, but also an outstanding example in the field of China's contemporary sculpture. The essence of contemporary art is taking the contemporary time as background, considering and expressing contemporary issue on the basis of contemporary experiences and practice, thus the expressing power of form should be concentrated into the elements above. Both Wang Zhong's Great Cross 1999 and Remains 1990-1999 express the same theme, which is a kind of worry and concern at the end of a century, a kind of worry about civilization. In the two series of works, the artist makes a sharp contrast between cross and graveyard and human being that have been highly materialized. What can we take it as? Is that a profound reconsideration to the reality or a tragic prediction to the future? Just like Wang Zhong's Outer Form (finished in 1998), in which work he made human being by connected stainless steel and forged copper with screws like a sculpture in ancient Egypt. The work has a strong sense of positive dignity, and what supports the dignity is a length of chain. The greatest significance of human being lies in their unlimited power of creation. However, the unlimited development might make human being become much more fragile than ever, and this kind of paradox is just like the relationship between the significance of human being and the chains that limit human being's development. Wang Zhong's masterpieces make out integrity of composition full of imagination and profound consideration to the reality, at this extent, he entrusts life into the form, and realizes spirit jump beyond form and style. First published at World Arts, Jan, 1999 |