The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is a detail from a photograph of Chinese superstar Zhan Wang's 2006-2008 installation Garden Utopia. A cluster of stainless-steel forms, inspired by jiashanshi — the craggy scholars' rocks that populate so many classical Chinese paintings — rise from a cloud of dry ice, in a formulation that simultaneously recalls mountain peaks, traditional Chinese backyards, and a bird's-eye view of a hypermodern cityscape. Garden Utopia first appeared at the National Museum of China in May 2008 and is on view courtesy of Beijing's Long March Space from September 10 through 13 at the ShContemporary 08 art fair.

Born in Beijing in 1962, Zhan attended the Beijing Industrial Arts College from 1978 to 1981 and studied sculpture in the city's Central Academy of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1988. For his postgraduate debut in 1993, he produced In a Twinkling as part of the Central Academy-affiliated Sculpture Research Institute. Posed in tumbling mid-movement outside a building, Twinkling's five figures suggest a world gone wrong, breaking the staunch restraints of traditional sculpture. With this work and those that followed, Zhan defied the Chinese prejudice for sculpture as craft and representation over fine art and concept. In 1995, he began his well-received Artificial Rocks series that, like Garden Utopia, refers to scholars' rocks and China's swift industrialization. To create his jiashanshi, the sculptor coats an actual rock with stainless-steel plate and pounds a new skin around the organic shape. He then removes the metal sections from the rock, re-welds them to make a hollow shell, and polishes the result to a mirrored finish. Artistically and practically, Zhan's art has few limits. His work made waves first in China, but also in the US, Europe, and Australia. He participated in the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the 2002 Guangzhou Triennial, and the 2003 Venice Biennale.

The Artificial Rock is a burnished shadow of its heavy predecessor and has been applied to a host of geological formations, including tiny tabletop pieces, monoliths, and even meteorites. They are intended for a range of settings, many impressive and even astronomical: Rock Number 59 sits in the center of the British Museum, while the unexecuted New Meteorite Sky-Patching Project sought permission to launch a steel casting of a 1976 meteorite into space. For his 2004 Mount Everest Project, the artist scaled the world's tallest mountain and placed one of his shimmering plinths at its apex. Rather than over-intellectualizing his art, Zhan makes work that nods to both our artificial present and our more primal past, our lofty ambitions and our simpler reality.
- Lauren McKee