Zhang Yongjian, born in October 1958, was born in Pei County, Jiangsu Province, and was born and raised in Fei County, Shandong Province. In 1976, he was admitted to the Fine Arts Department of Jining Normal College in 1977. In 1980, he taught fei county teacher training. In 1983, the "Urban Sculpture Office" was established in Jining City. In 2002, Fei County "Houpo Stone Art Studio" was established. He is currently a researcher at the Sculpture Institute of the National Academy of Painting of China, a director of the China Sculpture Society, and the vice chairman of the Shandong Sculpture Association.
Dialogue with silent stones in a noisy era
Article/Reporter Zhang Hui
Zhang Yongjian's sculpture studio is located on the back slope of Zhongluo Mountain in Fei County.
Far from the hustle and bustle of the world, old-fashioned stone houses and modern cutting equipment, many of the most shocking works are designed by Zhang Yongjian and made by his assistants here and then flowed to the whole country and even around the world. Shandong Provincial Art Museum, Qingdao Municipal Art Museum, Linyi Art Museum, Fei County Yan Zhenqing Park, Fei County Zhutian Town to commemorate the overall relocation of Cui Jiagou "Flowers on the Stone" can be seen In Zhang Yongjian stone carving works unique.
Zhang Yongjian's work "Blossom on the Stone"
His works are often amazed by abstraction, exaggeration, metaphor and symbolism, which also makes him one of the representative sculpture artists in China, and there are only a few domestic sculpture works that can interact with international interlocutors, and Zhang Yongjian is one of them.
Zhang Yongjian is spontaneous and innocent, his temperament is straightforward, although he laughs and scolds in words, he also contains generosity, simple and sincere, and informal. The famous writer Mr. Wang Zhaojun and him cherished each other, saying that he was a truly artistic talent, rare and very precious.
The mountains around the back slope are rocky, and Zhang Yongjian often sleepless in his stone house —many times, his mornings start at noon.
After the "85 New Wave", the ideological trend of artistic creation was in full swing, and almost all artists with ideological power were influenced by the "85 New Wave", and Zhang Yongjian's artistic creation also began to fully display his personality from that time, and those works that did not have personal characteristics began to be criticized and abandoned. In 1989, the China Modern Art Exhibition was launched, Zhang Yongjian's work "Black Box" was selected, since then, the personality of artistic creation and the renewal of artistic concepts have become the criteria for judging the importance of artistic works, and the postmodern style with deconstruction and criticism as the main ideas has become the main body of Zhang Yongjian's artistic creation.
In 1993, he participated in the international touring exhibition of Hanart Xuan hong Kong's "Post-89 National New Art" exhibition, and his works "High Noon", "Scarlet Box", "Red Gate" and "Meat Clip" were selected, which were later permanently collected by the Barcelona Museum of Art.
In 1994, he participated in the 1994 national solo exhibition "Sculpture" with more than 60 works created with various new materials such as rubber and plastic, and his work was named "New Cultural Relics" - he wanted to use exaggerated deformations to lash out at the "new" cultural relics that had begun to appear at that time.
Yan Zhenqing calligraphy series created for Yan Zhenqing Park
Yan Zhenqing's Calligraphy Series "Sacrifice Nephew Manuscripts"
Subsequently, he lived in Quanzhou for a long time, and his works began to influence Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Europe and the United States.
In 2003, Zhang Yongjian returned to the back slope of Fei County.
Zhang Yongjian Studio
Fei County, the hometown of strange stones, opened up a new path for Zhang Yongjian's later artistic creation, and he quickly turned to public art creation based on stone. Although his works have returned sharply from the original pioneers to peace and tradition, because of the "excellent randomness" of his artistic intuition, his expressive approach is still far beyond tradition and has experimental characteristics. The stone is still in his hand, and it still has different images from the stone.
Zhang Yongjian created a sculpture for Yan Zhenqing Park
Zhang Yongjian's work "Six Screens"
Zhang Yongjian's "Rhythm of The Four Seasons"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Rear Screen - Meilan Zhuju"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Leaving the Wind - Meilan Zhuju"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Xuancheng"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Psychic Bookstore - Sun Wu Statue"
Subsequently, his work "Whistling", which is based on Fei County stone, participated in the "'Beiyue Wind' International Sculpture Competition" and won the first prize.
Zhang Yongjian's work "Whistling"
Zhang Yongjian's work "The Tale of the Heavens"
"The Tale of the Heavens" is a work that was completed after the Fei County stone arrived in Tianchi, Changbai Mountain, Jilin Province, and the mottled stones are engraved with words related to women. At that time, the construction of this sculpture was all local Fei County people, they were either immigrants, or the descendants of the soldiers who were stationed in Fei County in the Ming and Qing dynasties, their predecessors and ancestors were buried in the distant Fei County, which can only be seen from a map, in addition to these workers, many people heard that there were stones transported from Thousands of Miles from Fei County, so they gathered from all over the northeast, crawled on the ground, burned paper and prostrated their heads, as if meeting their relatives in their hometown. The true meaning of art lies in seeing and awakening, and the imagery of a work is inextricable, inseparable from the richness of the audience's inner emotions and life experience. His other works, such as "History of Chinese Characters", "Leaving Hometown", "Ensemble", "Blossom on the Stone" and other works, are all expressions of this spiritual temperament.
Zhang Yongjian's "History of Chinese Characters"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Leaving Home"
Zhang Yongjian's "Ensemble"
His works, such as his personality, range from compassionate and gentle to sharp and sharp. He often bowed his head in the noisy environment, and sometimes suddenly loved to talk, but he often fell into the contemplation of sighing after gushing. So he would light a cigarette, look at the unfinished stone, and burn it out in silence...
Zhang Yongjian's work "Pulling Thorns"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Wind Skeleton"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Alone"
Zhang Yongjian's work "Circuit Board"
In the 1990s, Zhang Yongjian and Cui Jian
In June 2019, he participated in the activities of Dongyi College