Terracotta Sculpture a Passion for Creative Art Teacher

By David Alexander

They line the outdoor racks along Grant Avenue throughout Chinatown. They sell for maybe two or three dollars.

But the new collection of terracotta soldiers by Sunset artist Wanxin Zhang is unlike any of the ones that might be found in Chinatown. And his upcoming show at the Triangle Gallery is unlike any contemporary sculpture found in San Francisco today.

Currently Zhang teaches a class in Figurative Sculpture at the Academy of Art College, but his roots in sculpture date back to Chang Chun city in China. As a small child he recalls constantly drawing but holding only a modest interest in art. It was not until a teacher of his took a personal interest in Zhang and began providing him with books on Greco/Roman sculpture that he began to explore the medium.

Following his introduction to sculpture and his immediate enthusiasm towards it, Zhang enrolled in the local art school at Jilin, where he received a Diploma of Fine Art. Afterwards, he continued studying to receive a Bachelors of Art degree from the Institute of Fine Art in LuXun.

In 1992, he made his move to San Francisco to become a student at the Academy of Art College, where he eventually received a Fine Arts Masters Degree in sculpture. Although he began his life as an artist drawing, he knew from the moment he began working with clay that sculpture would be his medium of choice.

"Sculpture provides more energy. You can feel, you can move, you can touch the piece," Zhang says. Since 1992 he has lived in the same home in the Sunset District, which also serves as his studio.

The concept behind his current collection dates back to Zhang's youth.

At the age of 17, around the same time he was introduced to sculpture, he visited the tomb of China's First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The tomb is called the eighth wonder of the world for the thousands of terracotta statues built to guard the Emperor for eternity.

He remembers being held in shock by their presence. Before him stood 7,000 soldiers constructed for the sole purpose of protecting this single emperor. Although they appeared similar in their construction, each held, in at least by their primitive manufacture, their own uniqueness. Therein rose the question of identity: Who was this emperor who was so merited to have a stone army constructed for him and who were these soldiers forever standing guard?

In their own distinct time the figures were a symbol of the emperor's greatness. Now, a millennium later, they still guard the emperor's grave site.

Zhang began his work with the soldiers in 2000. He took the basic construct of the terracotta soldiers and used them as a platform, placing emphasis on the message instead of the medium. Zhang chooses a purposefully simple material to create each of the terracotta warriors.

"I had a concept I wanted to convey. I didn't want the pieces to be too complicated or confusing," he said.

Each piece still holds the form of the original terracotta soldiers, standing solidly in place, but to guide the question of identity into a more modern time, each holds its own symbol of contemporary culture.

Individually some of the pieces can appear comical. One sculpture has a large Mohawk haircut across its scalp while another rides atop a skateboard.

One sculpture in particular is of a small man, whose left side bears two arms, a symbol of strategy and philosophy. It is what Zhang calls, "Classical Contemporary - full of past style but given a new context."

Zhang recently completed his first self-portrait, created in a style similar to the rest of the collection. The idea was to present the self not only as a creature of the immediate moment, but as the self belonging to both the past and the present all at once, he said. And what better way to do it than with a self-portrait. He uses his face and joins it with the ancient form of the soldier. On the soldier's feet he creates unique boots.

Wanxin Zhang's collection will be showing July 9 through August 10 at the Triangle Gallery, located in the Financial District at 47 Kearny St.