Woodcarving that isn't wooden

Modern-day work rivals past masters, with craftsmanship that brings an everyday scene fully to life

It often seems that modern art falls into self-satire, but it is a pleasant surprise to see artwork with craftsmanship that rivals the great masters of the past in care and precision. Zheng Chunhui's terrific work in wood shows the realistic exactitude of a professional and the inspired flair of a dedicated artist.

Born in 1968 in Fujian province, Zheng began painting in his childhood and didn't begin working with wood until 1985. It didn't take him long to carve out his own style with a particularly meticulous technique. His work ethic, combined with his inimitable talent, has taken him to the heights of his profession.

Zheng is a member of the China Arts and Crafts Association, standing director of the Chinese Ethnic and Folk Arts and Crafts Association, executive director of the China Arts and Crafts Association and holds many more titles.

However, disregarding his care and technique for a moment, Zheng is not just an award-winning and talented artist. He is a Guinness World Record holder for the longest carving out of single piece of timber. He spent four years making a wooden replica of a famous Chinese painting called Along the River During Qingming Festival. His work gave a new, three-dimensional life to a 1,000-year-old painting that features the lives of both rich and poor during a small-town festival. The painting was done by Song Dynasty (960-1279) artist Zhang Zeduan.

Zheng's mind-blowing artwork is around 12 meters long and contains more than 550 individually carved characters, buildings, pavilions, mountains, rivers, boats, bridges and even clouds.

The masterpiece sucks you into a tornado of emotions, and looking at his work you can be forgiven for thinking you've been taken off by fairies because this piece - considering its scale and complexity - is less of a moment in time and more of a movable universe.

You hear the buzz of the bazaar streets, the slap of the water against boats plying the river, the birds in the clouds chirping.

Precision is the watchword of Zheng's work and it is what makes his work so distinguished: flowers and birds, animals and people, landscape and buildings - all done to an almost absurd degree of accuracy for this medium.

One also can't help but notice how Zheng uses the wood's grain to his advantage, how life seems to spring from the wood itself. It is in this way that the work, and indeed, many of Zheng's works, take on a life of their own and become a matter of exploration rather than extrapolation.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese