Zhou Yan Contemporary Chinese Art Archive 周彦当代中国艺术档案
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Date
1995
Format
Photograph
Materials
stainless steel
Description
Stainless steel is a material that the artist has used in his work, “Jia Shan Shi” for decades. "Jia Shan Shi (假山石, literally meaning fake rockery mountain) in Chinese gardens is the prototype of his series "Artificial Rocks," made of stainless steel. Traditional " Jia Shan Shi" is constructed from common rocks, that are stacked up to resemble mountains. In other cases, "Tai Hu Shi," a type of porous rock, produced in Suzhou, near Tai Hu, is used to resemble mountains singly. The artist placed a stainless steel plate on a "Jia Shan Shi" base, then utilized wooden hammer to knock it into a form of rock before polishing it to mirror effect. The artist replaced stones with stainless steel, which makes his "Artificial Rocks" double artificial. "Artificial Rock" could be seen as a metaphor for the industrialization or modernization of Chinese culture, see Yan Zhou, "A History of Contemporary Chinese Art: 1949 to Present," p.383. (Zhuocheng Jiang '26)
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