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Using Sculptures to Replicate the Human Experience

Chinese artist Xu Wang brings personal stories into sculptures like gargantuan skulls and umbrellas made of candy.
Xu Wang’s Big Skull in a classroom with the first year students at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, 2009. Photo courtesy of Xu Wang

A gigantic skull sits in the permanent collection of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), one of China’s most prestigious art schools. Spanning seven feet high and five feet across, its overblown depiction of human anatomy is the creation of Chinese artist Xu Wang. Born in 1986 in the southern port city of Dalian, the young talent has acquired fine art degrees from both the CAFA and Columbia University, now dividing his time between China and New York with a list of exhibits spread throughout.

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As China grows in importance within the contemporary art market, The Creators Project caught up with one of the country’s most interesting exports.

The Creators Project: So please tell us about your giant skull.

Xu Wang: The Big Skull was commissioned by the CAFA, where I graduated in 2010. The professors there were inspired by the giant skeleton model at the Repin Institute of Art in St Petersburg. The only instruction I received was a photograph. I had no idea how big the original was but I believed that I needed to make something bigger and grander than the one in Russia. It took me seven to eight months to finish the work. After completion, the sculpture professors didn’t like it. It was too real, too detailed and did not meet the conventional expectations for a sculptural work. But the painting professors loved it.

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Xu Wang works on constructing The Big Skull. Photo courtesy of Xu Wang

You studied sculpture at the CAFA with a focus on craftsmanship. What do you think it was about The Big Skull that caught the interest of those working in the painting department?

In class, I learned the theories of Rodin and Michelangelo, yet none of us had seen any works of these masters. Just like I had never seen the Russian skeleton. After many years, by accident, it occurred to me that the original Russian skull was only a quarter size of mine. I felt something magical about it. You imagine a goal. It confuses you. It challenges you. While you are working towards it, you achieve something even more interesting as a result.

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Do you think that makes you more of an abstract or expressionist sculptor?

Sculpture is about copying—you can always produce more of the same one. Before, I knew what kind of sculptor I was because I knew molding and craftsmanship. Now, I’m more into the story. I’m always thinking about why I’m making sculptures and how they can be more functional and bring people together.

Based on your professors’ reaction to The Big Skull, your artistic identity at present doesn’t seem to encompass traits that you were taught in school. Are art schools in China solely focused on craftsmanship?

More and more art schools emerged in China after the year 2000. All the students were learning the same skills in craftsmanship. It’s not so traditional anymore. More schools are focusing on teaching students how to make more conceptual or contemporary art. Sculptures are coming out weird because you can do whatever you want and there are now lots of ways to make sculpture in China.

How do you choose the materials for your sculptures?

I’m really flexible with materials. I like travelling and always write down any interesting materials that I find so that I can use them with the right project. Every time I work with a different material it’s a new opportunity to feel and experience. I value discovering interesting materials from life, especially used things that can be remade into other things.

What sort of themes do you find running through your work?

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I think it’s about human beings. For me, when a new project comes up, it’s all about making friends. I think all sculptures are two-dimensional unless there’s a story to go along with them. I don’t like form anymore. Art is about the inner story. Most of my work can still be reproduced and, if you want to be part of that, I can recycle the story by making a new one but with other people and their stories.

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Xu Wang standing underneath his candy umbrella. Umbrella Sugar. Photo courtesy of Xu Wang

Your Umbrella Sugar project is certainly like that.

Umbrella Sugar is an ongoing project that I started in 2011 immediately after arriving in New York. When you enter a new environment, you’re curious about the strange things around you, yet they always remind you of something you’re familiar with. You record your life, arrange old memories and collect new ones. Most of the clashes between old and new memories are triggered by very small objects. Umbrella is one of them.

When I lived in Beijing, I had an umbrella. The same umbrella that had been with me for years and it was never broken. When I moved to New York, I found all these umbrellas that were made in China becoming more fragile and expensive. I started to collect old umbrellas abandoned by other people. I fix them and leave them in the corner at home. People come to me to borrow umbrellas as they know I have many. Not surprisingly, very few of them are returned. I suppose they are broken and abandoned again.

Every umbrella I collect and fix might one day be borrowed and gone forever. I now make an umbrella that will be gone for sure—an umbrella with sugar panel. It’s kind of like when you place a sugar cube in your mouth and slowly it melts. My umbrella melts in the rain into the city. It’s an umbrella that is prone to the rain. I walk into the street with my sugar umbrella on rainy days. When the panel melts, it leaves a trace on the street. Like my trail all over Manhattan.

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Xu went to a candy expert in order to learn how to cook sugar at the right temperature for Umbrella Sugar. Photo courtesy of Xu Wang

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Umbrella Sugar installation in What the weather like today? Gallery 456, New York, China Town, 2014. Photo courtesy of Xu Wang

What’s next for you and your work?

I try to exhibit and survive as an artist. The exposure to contemporary art and the Western world has helped me realize that something has remained unchanged throughout my practice of being a sculptor and having an obsession for material, craft and the very idea of “making”—a sculptor does not deal with material, he gets along with it. To keep exploring and feel the excitement of this, I believe, is the most challenging aspect of being an artist.

See more of Xu Wang’s work here.

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