The Wood Sculptor and His Chasing Ground
Luo Wen
After his highly acclaimed solo exhibition in 2014, Li Zhan returned to the academy to focus on academic research for a decade. Recently, as a leading figure among young sculptors, he has unveiled a new body of meticulously crafted works in his solo exhibition *Hunting Ground* at O2art, marking a new phase in his artistic exploration. In sculpture—an art of constant addition and subtraction—what has Li Zhan carved away and what has he added to the wood he still deeply loves?
Extracting the “Truth” of Form
Presented in CHASE are his familiar early portrait works, like pensive messengers that hint at his past creative logic. Alongside them are animal sculptures created in 2015; beasts and human figures appear together, embodying the artist’s philosophical reflections on individual existence and his current interpretation of sculptural language as he matures.
After a long absence, Li Zhan gently and slowly recounts the origins of his works and their profound ideas. Years of dedicated teaching have made him quieter and more composed, yet his inner resolve remains unchanged—a quiet certainty, much like the impression left by his stunning 2014 wood portrait series: an artist who knows exactly what he can do, what he wants, and what he is making.
What lingers most about those early carvings is their expression—silent, distant, impassive faces, delicately rendered in camphor wood, paired with mysterious gestures. The fragrant camphor wood is transformed under his tools; he chisels and polishes to reveal the soul of the material. These portraits feel as if they were made by anonymous craftsmen from the Middle Ages, ancient Egypt, or some more mysterious era. And what is a blank expression, if not a portrait of the contemporary condition?
In recent years, Li Zhan has grown fond of simplicity and grown distant from complex visual experiences. “I prefer simplified forms. I dislike all external virtuosity and decoration, so I restrain my well-practiced ‘ornate’ skills to make forms direct and simple. I have my own understanding of beauty; I reject conventional beauty and always try to add something I call ‘flavor’ to the aesthetic structure of my works.”
Though still devoted to wood, he now rarely carves human figures and has turned to animal subjects. Throughout CHASE, tigers, leopards, rabbits, and other familiar creatures appear—standing, running, leaping—yet their faces and expressions are deliberately unrecognizable.
“This does not mean I am abandoning the human figure to become an ‘animal sculptor.’ Subject matter is not important to me. My work is built on the practice of sculptural language itself. Images and themes are mostly carriers for my understanding of sculpture,” Li Zhan explains.
Working toward de-figuration and de-personification, he carefully yet boldly reduces readable facial features. By stripping down imagery, he uses the symbolic nature of animal forms to direct viewers’ attention to movement, shape, line, volume, and the formal relationships that define sculpture.
The rabbits of various sizes in the exhibition do not appeal through faces, personality, or detail. They resemble rabbits in Plato’s world of ideals, closer to a universal “truth” of form. Whether de-personifying or de-figuring, his goal is to subordinate narrative and imagery to sculptural language itself, letting viewers experience the essence of sculpture.
For Li Zhan, sculpturality is the core of sculptural creation, regardless of representation or abstraction. It concerns the mechanism, aesthetic rules, and grammatical evolution of sculptural language.
“That is why I gradually weaken narrative and imagery in my works, emphasizing their abstract aesthetic core. These are representational, clearly figurative sculptures, yet internally they carry a sophisticated understanding of sculptural language—that is my standard,” he states. His future direction is to minimize the divide between figuration and abstraction toward freer formal expression.
In The Summit, he simplifies the bear’s facial features to an extreme. Clear marks from a chainsaw expose the wood’s raw vitality. Bold cutting distills the bear’s distinct posture: drooping, relaxed forelimbs, a powerfully charged spine… Between tension and relaxation, opposing forces, resemblance and suggestion, he seeks to distill Clive Bell’s “significant form,” activating the condensed, eternal language of sculpture for immediate, undeniable perception.
The Improvisational Process of “Making the Best of Mistakes”
Li Zhan’s doctoral advisor at CAFA was Professor Sun Jiabo, whose expressive creative approach opened the door to wood carving for him. The sensitive, unpredictable nature of wood convinced him that wood possesses life, and the artist’s mission is to uncover its inherent vitality.
Unlike clay, which allows easy addition, wood carving is an art of *subtraction*. It demands material awareness, low error tolerance, precise cutting, and a clear vision.
Despite his rational appearance, Li Zhan has unexpected lyrical passions: he plays musical instruments, especially classical guitar and morin khuur. Like the violin, the morin khuur requires an ear sensitive to pitch and deft hands. His feel for form seems innate, attuned to subtle rhythms and dynamics in both music and visual art.
This formal sensitivity appeared early in White Night (2015). He elevated the rough-hewn “blocking-out” stage of wood carving into an independent aesthetic, infusing the work with free, expressive spirit through highly condensed forms. In recent years, this has evolved into a direct, improvisational working method.
During his doctoral studies, Li Zhan systematically traced modern wood carving’s development. Impacted by contemporary art theory, he further broke free from material and conceptual constraints.
“Artists like Brâncuși and Henry Moore insisted on direct engagement with materials, especially hard wood and stone, rejecting indirect molding methods. This is the key divide between modern and classical Western sculpture.” For this reason, Li Zhan never makes maquettes, especially not clay models later translated into wood.
The clay-to-wood process is standard in academic sculpture education, rooted in historical factors including the Soviet training system. To contemporary wood sculptors, it reflects disregard for the material.
When conceiving forms, Li Zhan prioritizes material specificity and physicality. He favors hard materials, obsessed with the tension of carving against resistance, and delights in improvised dialogue with wood.
As he says: “Every material has unique fibers, offering distinct tactile feedback. I must account for fiber direction; material constraints are strict rules in a game. The stricter the rules, the more exciting the play. Wood has remained my most interesting, joyful medium for years.”
Material specificity appears in the cracks of the seated rabbit in Great Dream and the turning tiger in The King, and in the subtle grain of the classically elegant, planar leopard in Haze. In Weasel (2018), he experimented with sandstone, showing openness to new materials. He respects the materials he works with and enjoys their inspiration and challenges.
Furthermore, tools become vital to his formal language. Works like Battle Axe incorporate readymade elements: bases, steel frames, wooden wedges. He inserts his most used tools into the work like “plugins,” embedding process traces to reveal the bond between material, artist’s body, artwork, and human action. These tools act as “Easter eggs,” evoking the work’s making.
“Material, tool, and I create together. Errors exist, but my wood carving is not about correcting mistakes—it is improvisation by making the best of them. The back-and-forth of control and loss of control is an adventure, a battle of wits with wood.” True to the exhibition title CHASE, Li Zhan engages in a vivid hunt with his materials.
The “Stirrer” in Space
From themes to material exploration, Li Zhan has developed his sculptural language along a steady academic path. In 2008, his graduation work *The World* won first prize at the CAFA Graduation Exhibition and the inaugural Zeng Zhushao Award. During his master’s studies, he focused on wood portraits, which debuted to acclaim in his 2014 exhibition Eye to Eye. He later earned his doctorate and joined CAFA’s faculty. Yet in recent years, he felt his steady practice becoming enclosed. He slowly rethought his direction, seeking breakthroughs—a process of internalizing his language. CHASE gathers the results of this experimental phase.
Chinese wood carving has evolved amid tensions: inheritance vs. innovation, technique vs. concept, tradition vs. contemporary needs. With solid academic training and a contemporary vision, Li Zhan stands at the crossroads of East and West, tradition and modernity.
In his essay *On “Force” in Sculptural Language*, Li Zhan articulates his understanding of sculpture’s essence: “Sculptural acts revolve around the interaction of forces. The forms sculptors create—full or shrunken, inflated or dry—all result from dual forces, physical and behavioral, gradually forming aesthetic consciousness in human civilization.” The sculptor’s work is to express force through form and space.
Works in *Hunting Ground* reveal his pursuit of richer sculptural space through internal and external expressions of force. Like Henry Moore, he penetrates the interior of sculpture, using hollows and perforations to create negative space and break the closed form of traditional wood carving.
Beyond music, Li Zhan collects antique wood panels—intricately hollowed residential carvings from the Qing and Republican periods. From these, he learned how untrained craftsmen creatively layered space within limited materials, freely yet visually coherently.
“This encouraged me to boldly pierce and hollow out enclosed wood blocks, shifting my focus from figurative expression in wood portraiture to the study of form and space. This was a major shift in my formal construction,” he says.
Li Zhan describes sculpture as a “stirrer” in space. In *Hunting Ground*, careful arrangement creates dynamic force relationships between works and between works and space; sculpture and space are no longer isolated.
He vividly compares sculpture and space to fish and water: air flows inside and around sculpture like fish moving past stones in water. Sculpture is not static; it pulses and breathes, stirring space to activate its “pool.” “Of course, this is my romantic vision of sculpture. It often makes me think: Between heaven and earth, is it not like a bellows?” This is the spatial experience he believes ideal sculpture can deliver.
Recently, Li Zhan has grown fascinated by Neolithic painted pottery, studying subtle formal variations and aesthetic principles with great pleasure. He increasingly feels that Eastern and Western art are not deeply opposed; early human art seems to share a common system.
Thus, the aura of his works does not belong exclusively to Han stone carvings, simplified wooden figures, medieval icons, or divine ancient Egyptian art. It is hard to pinpoint which civilization inspired the blue goat holding a qin in "Faun" or the architectural scene in "Implanted Memory".
For Li Zhan, integrating shared qualities of Eastern and Western art matters more than highlighting differences. This synthetic formal vision has lifted his style and philosophy beyond academic conventions. He has gradually developed a method that both weakens the boundary between figuration and abstraction and merges universal elements of global art.
一个做木雕的人和他的猎场
文/罗雯
Luo Wen
After his highly acclaimed solo exhibition in 2014, Li Zhan returned to the academy to focus on academic research for a decade. Recently, as a leading figure among young sculptors, he has unveiled a new body of meticulously crafted works in his solo exhibition *Hunting Ground* at O2art, marking a new phase in his artistic exploration. In sculpture—an art of constant addition and subtraction—what has Li Zhan carved away and what has he added to the wood he still deeply loves?
Extracting the “Truth” of Form
Presented in CHASE are his familiar early portrait works, like pensive messengers that hint at his past creative logic. Alongside them are animal sculptures created in 2015; beasts and human figures appear together, embodying the artist’s philosophical reflections on individual existence and his current interpretation of sculptural language as he matures.
After a long absence, Li Zhan gently and slowly recounts the origins of his works and their profound ideas. Years of dedicated teaching have made him quieter and more composed, yet his inner resolve remains unchanged—a quiet certainty, much like the impression left by his stunning 2014 wood portrait series: an artist who knows exactly what he can do, what he wants, and what he is making.
What lingers most about those early carvings is their expression—silent, distant, impassive faces, delicately rendered in camphor wood, paired with mysterious gestures. The fragrant camphor wood is transformed under his tools; he chisels and polishes to reveal the soul of the material. These portraits feel as if they were made by anonymous craftsmen from the Middle Ages, ancient Egypt, or some more mysterious era. And what is a blank expression, if not a portrait of the contemporary condition?
In recent years, Li Zhan has grown fond of simplicity and grown distant from complex visual experiences. “I prefer simplified forms. I dislike all external virtuosity and decoration, so I restrain my well-practiced ‘ornate’ skills to make forms direct and simple. I have my own understanding of beauty; I reject conventional beauty and always try to add something I call ‘flavor’ to the aesthetic structure of my works.”
Though still devoted to wood, he now rarely carves human figures and has turned to animal subjects. Throughout CHASE, tigers, leopards, rabbits, and other familiar creatures appear—standing, running, leaping—yet their faces and expressions are deliberately unrecognizable.
“This does not mean I am abandoning the human figure to become an ‘animal sculptor.’ Subject matter is not important to me. My work is built on the practice of sculptural language itself. Images and themes are mostly carriers for my understanding of sculpture,” Li Zhan explains.
Working toward de-figuration and de-personification, he carefully yet boldly reduces readable facial features. By stripping down imagery, he uses the symbolic nature of animal forms to direct viewers’ attention to movement, shape, line, volume, and the formal relationships that define sculpture.
The rabbits of various sizes in the exhibition do not appeal through faces, personality, or detail. They resemble rabbits in Plato’s world of ideals, closer to a universal “truth” of form. Whether de-personifying or de-figuring, his goal is to subordinate narrative and imagery to sculptural language itself, letting viewers experience the essence of sculpture.
For Li Zhan, sculpturality is the core of sculptural creation, regardless of representation or abstraction. It concerns the mechanism, aesthetic rules, and grammatical evolution of sculptural language.
“That is why I gradually weaken narrative and imagery in my works, emphasizing their abstract aesthetic core. These are representational, clearly figurative sculptures, yet internally they carry a sophisticated understanding of sculptural language—that is my standard,” he states. His future direction is to minimize the divide between figuration and abstraction toward freer formal expression.
In The Summit, he simplifies the bear’s facial features to an extreme. Clear marks from a chainsaw expose the wood’s raw vitality. Bold cutting distills the bear’s distinct posture: drooping, relaxed forelimbs, a powerfully charged spine… Between tension and relaxation, opposing forces, resemblance and suggestion, he seeks to distill Clive Bell’s “significant form,” activating the condensed, eternal language of sculpture for immediate, undeniable perception.
The Improvisational Process of “Making the Best of Mistakes”
Li Zhan’s doctoral advisor at CAFA was Professor Sun Jiabo, whose expressive creative approach opened the door to wood carving for him. The sensitive, unpredictable nature of wood convinced him that wood possesses life, and the artist’s mission is to uncover its inherent vitality.
Unlike clay, which allows easy addition, wood carving is an art of *subtraction*. It demands material awareness, low error tolerance, precise cutting, and a clear vision.
Despite his rational appearance, Li Zhan has unexpected lyrical passions: he plays musical instruments, especially classical guitar and morin khuur. Like the violin, the morin khuur requires an ear sensitive to pitch and deft hands. His feel for form seems innate, attuned to subtle rhythms and dynamics in both music and visual art.
This formal sensitivity appeared early in White Night (2015). He elevated the rough-hewn “blocking-out” stage of wood carving into an independent aesthetic, infusing the work with free, expressive spirit through highly condensed forms. In recent years, this has evolved into a direct, improvisational working method.
During his doctoral studies, Li Zhan systematically traced modern wood carving’s development. Impacted by contemporary art theory, he further broke free from material and conceptual constraints.
“Artists like Brâncuși and Henry Moore insisted on direct engagement with materials, especially hard wood and stone, rejecting indirect molding methods. This is the key divide between modern and classical Western sculpture.” For this reason, Li Zhan never makes maquettes, especially not clay models later translated into wood.
The clay-to-wood process is standard in academic sculpture education, rooted in historical factors including the Soviet training system. To contemporary wood sculptors, it reflects disregard for the material.
When conceiving forms, Li Zhan prioritizes material specificity and physicality. He favors hard materials, obsessed with the tension of carving against resistance, and delights in improvised dialogue with wood.
As he says: “Every material has unique fibers, offering distinct tactile feedback. I must account for fiber direction; material constraints are strict rules in a game. The stricter the rules, the more exciting the play. Wood has remained my most interesting, joyful medium for years.”
Material specificity appears in the cracks of the seated rabbit in Great Dream and the turning tiger in The King, and in the subtle grain of the classically elegant, planar leopard in Haze. In Weasel (2018), he experimented with sandstone, showing openness to new materials. He respects the materials he works with and enjoys their inspiration and challenges.
Furthermore, tools become vital to his formal language. Works like Battle Axe incorporate readymade elements: bases, steel frames, wooden wedges. He inserts his most used tools into the work like “plugins,” embedding process traces to reveal the bond between material, artist’s body, artwork, and human action. These tools act as “Easter eggs,” evoking the work’s making.
“Material, tool, and I create together. Errors exist, but my wood carving is not about correcting mistakes—it is improvisation by making the best of them. The back-and-forth of control and loss of control is an adventure, a battle of wits with wood.” True to the exhibition title CHASE, Li Zhan engages in a vivid hunt with his materials.
The “Stirrer” in Space
From themes to material exploration, Li Zhan has developed his sculptural language along a steady academic path. In 2008, his graduation work *The World* won first prize at the CAFA Graduation Exhibition and the inaugural Zeng Zhushao Award. During his master’s studies, he focused on wood portraits, which debuted to acclaim in his 2014 exhibition Eye to Eye. He later earned his doctorate and joined CAFA’s faculty. Yet in recent years, he felt his steady practice becoming enclosed. He slowly rethought his direction, seeking breakthroughs—a process of internalizing his language. CHASE gathers the results of this experimental phase.
Chinese wood carving has evolved amid tensions: inheritance vs. innovation, technique vs. concept, tradition vs. contemporary needs. With solid academic training and a contemporary vision, Li Zhan stands at the crossroads of East and West, tradition and modernity.
In his essay *On “Force” in Sculptural Language*, Li Zhan articulates his understanding of sculpture’s essence: “Sculptural acts revolve around the interaction of forces. The forms sculptors create—full or shrunken, inflated or dry—all result from dual forces, physical and behavioral, gradually forming aesthetic consciousness in human civilization.” The sculptor’s work is to express force through form and space.
Works in *Hunting Ground* reveal his pursuit of richer sculptural space through internal and external expressions of force. Like Henry Moore, he penetrates the interior of sculpture, using hollows and perforations to create negative space and break the closed form of traditional wood carving.
Beyond music, Li Zhan collects antique wood panels—intricately hollowed residential carvings from the Qing and Republican periods. From these, he learned how untrained craftsmen creatively layered space within limited materials, freely yet visually coherently.
“This encouraged me to boldly pierce and hollow out enclosed wood blocks, shifting my focus from figurative expression in wood portraiture to the study of form and space. This was a major shift in my formal construction,” he says.
Li Zhan describes sculpture as a “stirrer” in space. In *Hunting Ground*, careful arrangement creates dynamic force relationships between works and between works and space; sculpture and space are no longer isolated.
He vividly compares sculpture and space to fish and water: air flows inside and around sculpture like fish moving past stones in water. Sculpture is not static; it pulses and breathes, stirring space to activate its “pool.” “Of course, this is my romantic vision of sculpture. It often makes me think: Between heaven and earth, is it not like a bellows?” This is the spatial experience he believes ideal sculpture can deliver.
Recently, Li Zhan has grown fascinated by Neolithic painted pottery, studying subtle formal variations and aesthetic principles with great pleasure. He increasingly feels that Eastern and Western art are not deeply opposed; early human art seems to share a common system.
Thus, the aura of his works does not belong exclusively to Han stone carvings, simplified wooden figures, medieval icons, or divine ancient Egyptian art. It is hard to pinpoint which civilization inspired the blue goat holding a qin in "Faun" or the architectural scene in "Implanted Memory".
For Li Zhan, integrating shared qualities of Eastern and Western art matters more than highlighting differences. This synthetic formal vision has lifted his style and philosophy beyond academic conventions. He has gradually developed a method that both weakens the boundary between figuration and abstraction and merges universal elements of global art.
一个做木雕的人和他的猎场
文/罗雯
李展继2014年个展大获好评后，便回到学校安心做起了学问，至今已有10年。最近，这位被视作年轻一代雕塑代表人物的艺术家，携一批潜心打磨的新作，在新氧艺O2art以个展“猎场”正式开启创作探索的新阶段。在雕塑这个不断做“加减法”的艺术门类里，在他依旧为之沉醉的木头上，李展刨除掉了什么，又增添了哪些？
提炼形象的“真理”
在李展个展“猎场”现场，早年人们熟悉的肖像作品依然在列，如心事重重的信使，埋下过往创作思路的草蛇灰线。相对应的创作于2015年的动物雕像，走兽与人像同台登场，上演着在创作道路上日臻成熟的他，对于个体生存状态的哲思，以及他对于“雕塑语言”的现阶段回答。
有阵日子不见的李展，以他特有的温和语气，徐徐讲述作品来历与背后深邃的思考。也许是因为在学院里潜心教学，人也变得更安静、沉稳。但某种内核似乎并没有变，或许是一种，可判断为笃定感的东西？就像2014年，他一出手就技惊四座的木雕肖像系列带给观者的感受——这是一个非常知道自己能做什么，想做什么，在做什么的创作者。
回顾那批木雕，最让人印象深刻的是“表情”。缄默、疏离、木然的面孔，依托香樟木材料的细腻刻画，肖像神秘的手势……散发淡淡香气的香樟木在李展手中，化腐朽为神奇，如琢如磨，挖掘着木材的灵魂。这些肖像更像出自中世纪、古埃及，或某段更为神秘岁月里的无名工匠之手。没有表情，何尝不是当代的表情？
近些年，李展越发喜欢简单的东西，对繁复的视觉经验没有太多共鸣。“我喜欢尽量简化出的造型，厌恶一切外化的技巧和修饰，所以在创作时尽量压制自己业已掌握很多的‘华丽’的技术，尽量让造型变得简单直接。对‘美’的认知我也有自己的角度，不太承认那种已然获得共识的‘美’，总希望在作品的美学建构中添加一些可称之为‘味道’的因素。”
李展依然钟情木雕，却鲜少刻画人像了，反而将注意力转向动物题材。在“猎场”现场，满场或停驻、奔跑、飞天的老虎、豹子、兔子等常见动物形象，都有着难以辨识的脸孔与表情。
“这并不意味着我要放弃人物题材，成为一个‘动物雕塑家’。创作题材对我来讲并不重要，我的创作是建构在雕塑本体语言实践上的。形象或题材，大部分是我对雕塑语言认知的载体。”李展对笔者说。
从“去人物化”和“去形象化”两个角度考虑，李展小心翼翼又大刀阔斧地，放弃在作品里投放太多的“可读性颜面”。去形象化，意味着李展希望利用动物形象自带的符号性，将观众的视线吸引到动势、形态、线条、体积等构造雕塑整体关系的形式要素上。
展览中大大小小的兔子，并不以脸庞、个性与细节吸引眼光。它们更像存在于柏拉图理念世界中的兔子，或者说，更接近某种建立在普遍性之上，有关形象的“真理”。无论“去人物”，还是“去形象”，其目的都在于艺术家希望让叙事、形象的诱惑屈从于雕塑语言本身，让观者心无旁骛地体会雕塑本体的魅力。
在李展看来，无论具象或抽象，“雕塑性”才是雕塑创作的本质问题，涉及雕塑艺术语言的发生机制、审美规则或语法变革等。
“这是我在作品中逐渐弱化形象与叙事，更加强调其审美层面的抽象内核的原因。这些作品是具象的、可明辨形象的写实雕塑，但其内在具备卓越的对于雕塑语言特征的认知与理解——这是我对自己的要求。”在语言进化的道路上，大幅度削弱具象与抽象的差异性，进入更为自由的形式表达，这是李展未来的方向。
在《山顶》中，李展几乎将熊的面部特征简化到极致，电锯劈过的痕迹清晰可见，木料暴露出其原本的生命质地。大刀阔斧的形体切割，高度提炼出熊特有的肢体动态：下垂的、松弛的上肢，充满力量张力的脊背……在紧张与松弛、力与力的对抗、似与不似之间，艺术家试图高度提炼英国形式主义美学家克莱夫·贝尔提出的“有意味的形式”，以此最大程度地调动起雕塑本质中更具凝固性与永恒性的艺术语言，产生确凿无疑的感知。
“将错就错”的即兴过程
李展在中央美术学院雕塑系的博士生导师是孙家钵先生，孙先生带有写意特征的创作方法，为他打开木雕创作的大门。木头既敏感，又充满意外的特质，让李展总觉得木头本就有生命，艺术家的使命就是挖掘木头自身的生命力。
相比易于增补，擅长“做加法”的泥塑材料，木雕其实是一门“做减法”的艺术。强调从材料出发，又因容错率低，下刀极考验经验与技巧，更要求创作者胸有丘壑。
看上去理性派的李展，却有让人感到一点反差的感性爱好。比如，他酷爱器乐弹奏，尤其擅长古典吉他和马头琴。与小提琴类似，马头琴的音准很难掌握，要求一双对误差极敏感的耳朵，以及一对能体察微妙差异的灵巧双手。对于李展来说，他对“形式”的感触似乎源于天生，天然就能觉察音乐与造型艺术中，那些不易察觉的跌宕起伏与轻重缓急。
对形式的偏好在2015年的《白夜》中已有体现。李展以大刀阔斧之势，将木雕创作中至关重要的“开大荒”环节，提炼为某种独立的审美特质，以高度概括的形体，为作品注入挥洒自由的写意精神。直至近年来，演变为强调直接性与即兴的工作方法。
读博期间，李展系统梳理了木雕在现代艺术阶段的发展理路，受现当代艺术理论与思潮的冲击，他进一步摆脱材料与观念的束缚。
“布朗库西、亨利·摩尔等艺术家，在大部分创作生涯中都笃信直面材料的重要性，尤其是对待木材、石材这类硬质材料，拒绝模制法这种间接使用材料的方式。这也是西方现代雕塑与古典雕塑的最大分野。”基于此，李展从不做小稿，尤其不采用先做泥稿再转化为木雕的方式。
泥稿转木雕，这是学院雕塑教学中的基本流程，背后是传统木雕在中国现代雕塑发展中逐渐失语，这也与引进苏联造型教育体系等多重历史因素有关。在当代木雕艺术家看来，这意味着创作者对材料的漠视。
李展在思考造型理念时，尽可能考虑到材料的特殊性与物质性。他更偏爱硬质材料，痴迷于雕刻过程中与硬质材料进行力量对抗的感觉，在与木头的即兴对话中乐此不疲。
正如他所说：“每种材料都有其独特的纤维，给雕塑家反馈的手感各不相同。在处理造型时，必须考虑纤维带来的影响，材料带来的限制如同游戏中严苛的规则。规则越是严苛的游戏，往往越刺激、好玩。这些因素使得木头多年来一直是我觉得非常有意思，玩起来很快乐的创作材料。”
材料的特殊性，在《大梦》与《大王》中体现在端坐的兔子与回眸的老虎身上，一道道木头的裂痕。以及《雾霭》中兼具古典优雅与平面造型感的豹子，周身披着的淡淡木纹。2018年的作品《鼬》中，李展开始尝试使用砂岩，显示出在材料选择上的开放性。艺术家尊重与他对话的材料，也享受着材料带给他的灵感与挑战。此外，“工具”成为李展造型处理中的强力要素。《战斧》等作品结合的现成品，如底座、钢架、木楔等工具和材料，艺术家如“插件”般，把最常用的创作工具纳入创作，将工作痕迹植入作品中，揭示出材料与艺术家肉身，作品与人的实践行为之间的密切联系。这些工具就像“彩蛋”，唤起观众对作品生产过程的想象。
“材料、工具和我，三者共同配合创作。误差当然是存在的，但我的木雕创作不是一个‘纠错’的过程，而是一个‘将错就错’的即兴过程。失控和可控相互交替出现的冒险，呈现出我与木材斗智斗勇的过程。”如同展览题目“猎场”，李展与材料之间，展开了一场别开生面的狩猎游戏。
空间中的“搅动者”
从主题、题材到材料探索，李展寻找自己的雕塑语言，看似遵循了一条稳定的学院路径。2008年，毕业创作《世界》获中央美术学院毕业作品展一等奖，同年斩获首届“曾竹韶奖”。研究生阶段，他专攻人物木雕肖像，衍生的肖像作品在2014年个展“对视”中惊艳亮相。而后几年，读博并留校执教。一路走来，堪称稳扎稳打。然而，近些年来，李展感到自己稳定的创作逐渐显得封闭起来，他缓慢地梳理自己的思路，尝试突破和改变，这是一段内化自身艺术语言的过程。“猎场”就囊括了艺术家尝试雕塑语言实验的阶段性成果。
中国木雕发展一直在传承与创新、技术与观念、传统语境与当代诉求等内在张力的拉扯中行进。作为拥有深厚学院派基本功，兼具当代视野的创作者，李展也同样站在东西方、传统与当代的十字路口上。
在《浅论雕塑语言中的“力”》一文中，李展阐释了他近年来对雕塑本质的理解：“雕塑的行为围绕这一‘力的相互作用’而展开，雕塑家创造出的造型，无论饱满、萎缩，膨胀、干瘪——都是‘二力作用’的结果，这是来自身体的、行为的，同时也慢慢在人类文明史上形成了审美的自觉。”雕塑家的工作，意味着通过形体、空间去表现“力”。
“猎场”中的作品，从“力”的内外两个方向，显现出艺术家追求更丰富的雕塑空间的尝试。如亨利·摩尔般，李展向雕塑内部进发，以镂空、打孔等制造“负空间”的方式，打破传统木雕的封闭形态。
生活中，除了音乐，李展还爱好收藏，尤其喜欢多层镂空的清代和民国的民居木雕板。从这些木雕中，他领悟到没有被训练固化思维的工匠，如何在有限的材料中，以自由洒脱但又符合视觉需求的方式，实现空间层次的创造性表现。
“这促使我开始大胆地对封闭围合的木料，做穿透和镂空处理，让我的研究重点从木雕人物创作的形象表达，转向对形态、空间的研究。这是我作品形式建构过程中一个比较大的变化。”李展说。
李展形容雕塑为空间中的“搅动者”。“猎场”中，通过作品与作品、作品与空间之间的精心布置，雕塑和空间不再是孤立的存在，而是发生着力与力的关系。
李展生动地将雕塑与空间的关系，比喻为鱼与水的关系：空气在雕塑内外部流动，如同鱼在水中游过石头。雕塑绝非固态、不变的存在，它是律动，是呼吸，通过搅动空间，激活空间的“池水”。“当然，这是我个人对雕塑的浪漫想象，它常常让我想道：天地之间，其犹橐籥乎？”这是李展认为理想的雕塑艺术所能带来的空间体验。
最近，李展又爱上了新石器时期的彩陶器，琢磨器型之间的微妙差异与美学规律，这让他极为享受。他越来越感到，东西方艺术其实并不存在太对立的区别，整个人类早期艺术仿佛来自一个共同的大系统。
因此，李展作品中散发出的气质，并不具体指向雄浑的汉代石像，简约抽象的木俑，或是中世纪的神像和古埃及富有神性的艺术。就像人们很难说清，《牧神》中捧琴的蓝色山羊，《植入的记忆》中的建筑场景，究竟来自哪一个文明的启迪。
在李展看来，融合东西方艺术的共性特征，远比寻找差异性与特殊性更为重要。这种趋于整合的造型观，也让他在格调与理念上超越了学院范式。逐渐形成了一条既削弱具象与抽象差异性，又融汇东西方艺术共性的工作方法。