by Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Location: UCCA Big Hall
Artist(s): ZHAN Wang
Date: 26 Nov 2011 - 25 Feb 2012
This November, UCCA welcomes a highly-anticipated sculpture and video installation from Beijing's revered sculptor Zhan Wang.
Zhan Wang has displayed his series of stainless-steel rock casts at an impressive resume of venues, even hauling one to the top of Mt. Everest. For his exhibit My Personal Universe at UCCA, Zhan Wang began the extensive production process for the project by exploding a gigantic boulder in the mountains of Shandong Province while recording the event on hi-definition video from six different angles at 2000 frames per second. In post-production, he extended the millisecond of the explosion from all six angles into three-minute clips. The six HD footages will be projected onto giant screens in the UCCA Big Hall, making the path of each floating rock fragment stunningly clear from each angle. Suspended throughout the exhibition space are over 5000 stainless-steel replicas of the stone fragments from the blast: their gleaming surfaces reflect the footage of the explosion into infinity, thus creating an endless abyss reminiscent of the birth of the universe.
Zhan Wang’s exhibition is further subdivided into two separate but consecutive “facets” – outer and inner – that explore complementary sides of the artist’s private universe. Using different methods of installation and video, these two “facets” illuminate the universe that exists outside, and the universe that lies within.