Chinese scholar's rocks have been an important object of Chinese material culture and aesthetic connoisseurship since the Song dynasty and today are still appreciated for their dramatic forms, intricate spaces, movements, contrasting colors, or resemblance to sacred mountains. The great conceit of scholar's rocks, however, was that they were naturally occurring formations, forged over thousands of years of exposure to nature's elements. In fact, many were partially if not fully man-made; these "natural" stones were meant to provide an occasion for contemplation that nature itself did not necessarily always provide. In re-creating the scholar's rock into a series called 'Artificial Rock', Zhan Wang provides a medium for contemplation and ornamentation for today's viewers. As Zhan Wang himself describes, "My approach is to attempt to marry together the two extremes of primitive, untamed nature and the artificial, which is manmade and, therefore, man controlled. The highest aim we can seek to attain is the "unity of Man and nature", and "to achieve goals doing nothing that goes against natureK I aim to eliminate the gulf that exists between the two by demonstrating the conflicts to which they allude." This is perhaps best illustrated in the method and medium with which Zhan Wang forms his art.

Zhan Wang's large Artificial Rock Series No. 28 (Lot 1464) of the Bransten Collection and Artificial Rock (Lot 1363) are each sculpted with numerous unique tunnels and angles allowing from the work to be visually different from every angle. Like the scholar's rocks of period gardens they serve as a provocative reinterpretation of the classic form in stainless steel. It also proposes a sophisticated and complex renegotiation of traditional Chinese aesthetics and culture for the contemporary moment. Similar to the traditional rock formations are irregularly formed to hide the hand of their author. Each is hand-hammered out of sheets of steel over original stones into exquisitely modulated surfaces to mimic a natural sculpture despite its mechanized process. Zhan Wang's choice to use stainless steel in its luxurious shine not only absorbs the colors but exudes an extravagance that Zhan Wang likens to materialism. Like liquid mercury these glistening sculptures aptly refract light onto their contemporary surroundings and not just idyllic gardens as they once did. Smaller ones such as Artificial Rock No. 21 (Lot 1452) would serve as literati scholar's objects and examined and contemplated in one's study. Faced by these jewel like forms, the viewer is brought to consider the grinding pace and materiality of contemporary society as once scholars considered the grandeur of nature in the peaks and intricate crevices of the rocks. In the curvature of the surfaces our world appears warped and off balance and as such is an illusionist reflection of our world.

As Wu Hong has written, "We must realize that to Zhan Wang, glittering surface, ostentatious glamour, and illusory appearance are not necessarily bad qualities, and that his stainless-steel rocks are definitely not designed as satire or mockery of contemporary material culture. Rather, both the original rockeries and his copies are material forms selected or created for people's spiritual needs; their different materiality suits different needs at different times. The problem he addresses is thus one of authenticity: Which rock- the original or his copy- more genuinely reflects contemporary Chinese culture?"

In this way, Zhan Wang revives the contemplative appreciation of scholar's rocks as a visual but also sensory experience, not just one enjoyed through the projection into an imagined nature. Moreover, Zhan has turned a fantasy of "nature" into an aestheticization of contemporary experience, one of fleeting images, sensations, and desires. As such, the conventional opposition between tradition and modernity has been reconsidered, and Zhan Wang has offered an approach to age's old Chinese aesthetics while bringing them fully into the present in a new and sophisticated way.