For Chinese sculpture and conceptual artist Zhan Wang, his latest work is explosive - literally.

Ever since he started to work on My Personal Universe (pictured) two years ago, he has been looking for a back-to-nature experience by exploding a large rock with dynamite.

"The initial state could refer to the initial state of the universe and the emergence of concepts, such as space and time. It could also refer to the birth of art," he says at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, where his installation is on display through Feb 25.

"It's all about an artist and the rock."

The two-year process was full of unexpected things, which led to an hour-long documentary and a book.

Nearly 7,000 fragments of stone and a stainless steel replica of each are hung from invisible wires. Two- to three- minute video clips of the explosion are played in super-slow-motion on six large screens.

"I wanted the audience, as well as myself, to be able to see clearly the trajectory of every rock fragment from the blast, and from the same perspective that human beings might view a cosmic explosion," he says.

According to the artist, he hunted for stones that were at least 5 meters long for the explosion and finally succeeded in the Yimeng Mountain of Shandong province. To capture the high-speed effect of explosion, he used a high-definition video camera and shot between 10 am to 2 pm for maximum natural light.

"In the long process of filming My Personal Universe, nothing went according to plan, but everything happened for a reason," he says.

His conceptual sculptures have been exhibited in numerous countries including Italy, France, Japan and Singapore. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City also recently acquired one of his stainless steel rock replicas - making him one of the first contemporary Chinese artists to have a work in the museum's permanent collection.

His exhibition, On Gold Mountain, shown in San Francisco in 2008, used rocks selected from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to create sculptures.

Born in Beijing in the early 1960s, Zhan first explored the notion of using rock in 1995. He found that traditional Chinese artificial rocks placed outside the entrances of new skyscrapers formed an interesting contrast of old and new.

To him, these rocks were fragments of the Western industrialized world that had been imported into Chinese society. Despite China's attempts to modernize, traditional Chinese culture had undergone no fundamental change. This was enough to inspire Zhan.

Standing in the exhibition hall surrounded by thousands of rocks, Zhan says that when he finished the work, he felt like human beings were "just bacteria so insignificant".

To further explore the relationship of human beings in the universe, an improvisational feast of music, song, dance and performance will be presented as part of the exhibition.

Modern dancer Gaojin Yanzi, cellist Song Zhao, and musician Du Wei, will perform among the rocks, together with the artist Zhan. The show will be a performance using different kinds of artistic language to explore the many facets of the universe.

You may contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/12/2012 page15)