Stone Fortune – Zhang Hua Solo Exhibition

 

 

 

Stone Fortune – Zhang Hua Solo Exhibition

Curator: Xue Tao

Reception: 2013.04.12, 16 – 21:00

Duration: 2013.04.12 – 05.12

Add:  A zone, Jin Ding 1919•Loft, North JinDingShan Lu No.24, Kunming（650031），Yunnan, China

Tel：+86 871 65385159

www.943studio.cn

contemporaryyunnan@gmail.com

@weibo.com/943gallery

 

Preface by Xue Tao

Zhanghua’s solo sculpture exhibition which will be presented soon in Contemporary Yunnan Gallery is going to interpreter an attitude of a metropolitan-based naturalism artist towards sculpture works creation, and an instinct response when approaching the genesis of art.

The history of sculpture usually is known initiated from the Stone Age. Stoneware honing is deem to be a positive recognition behavior for human being to learn the concept of volume, while hole-drilling on animals’ tooth was the first experience for human being to explore dimensional position. With the growing up and development of human’s civilization and science and technology, materials for sculpture also expanded from stone and wood to pottery, metal and porcelain, even to today’s plastic/resin and such high-tech materials. This is a widely acknowledged development process of sculpture material.

Zhanghua’s art creation, though, is a converse process to sculpture development process. Most of his early sculpture works were based upon the use of resin and gypsum in the beginning period of being a professional artist when he graduated from the art institute. All information about Zhanghua we can find from Baidu on the Internet is about resin works. After a plenty of resin sculpture work creation, he became unsatisfied with this material and started to attempt with the other materials. He even spent two years on ceramics but didn’t result in a big satisfaction. Ha said he could often gather some discarded stone materials and constructive materials near his house. These discarded stone materials collected from the waste heap were brought back home and then manually engraved by Zhanghua, and eventually became these amazing works exhibiting in this gallery now.

Zhanghua’s sculpture creation development, which transformed from resin to pottery, then to stone, and even to bamboo and tree branches, is just a reverse path of conventional sculpture history which we learned in academies. This is the most interesting factor of him. This reverse path presents the artist’s attitude to the relationship between human and environment. The direction of development of our city and urbanization is departing from the nature; science and technology, especially space technology are leading human being to depart from the earth. Is it really a right way that leads human being to safety and welfare? I myself was inspired to this kind of imagination by Zhanghua’s art works.

Zhanghua now likes working on his sculptures by hand. He doesn’t like any machinery which can bring convenience such as grinding machine. It reveals his preference and support to human’s prime power. At the same time, he attempts to prove the fact that the manual handling is the only way for artist to directly communicate with material and to learn more about material and the nature, and to show our respect and sincerity to the nature. Otherwise, we will gain nothing but a huge waste, even dreadful ruin.

One of the effective ways of learning about an artist in today’s context is to learn about the materials used in their art works and their manners of art creation. To a great extend, from the materials they are using, we can learn this artist’s value orientation and value judgment. The choice of material usually tells the attitude of this artist.

Ma.28th, 2013

Works