Expansive Imagination or Home Truth?

by Karen Smith
October 1998

Zhong Shan's most recent paintings are quite different from anything he has produced before. The main difference lies in paint itself, in the way that a coarser mixture of the oil pigment has been applied to the canvas. But there are changes in scale and focus, too, within the compositions themselves. A painting completed in July of 1998 – the most recent work at the time of writing – features a make figure, brought forward in the illusory space within the canvas, almost right up against the front of the picture plane. His head fills the greater part of the foreground. In this focus upon the action or activity of a single figure, it is possible to draw parallels with other works produced in the first half of 1998, like Start You Up, in which a futuristic man-child stoops jocularly to click a "mouse" that is on the ground at his feet. The mouse's "tail", its electric cable, drops off the bottom of the canvas and enters the viewer's space. With the mouse pointing away from this leprechaun of a figure and out at the viewer, and moreover, with our familiarity of a mouse being that thing useful only when connected to a computer, the title of the painting takes on an unsettling logic. Clearly the phrase "start you up" refers to entering the virtual world of cyber space in a computer; that space now occupied by the viewer. If it gives the viewer pause to feel illease at having the tables turned upon them, and being made to feel as if it is their space that is being "invaded", then this is just Zhong Shan intends. The question that begs to be answered here, that the artist himself asks the viewer to consider, is just who controls who? Does Man control the machines, or is it the machine that controls Man? And how much does the world of technology encroach upon our lives? In whatever environment we encounter a television screen, how many of us can pass by without looking at it? Can we see a mouse and resist the double click? This brings us neatly back to the painting discussed at the beginning which is entitled Interference.

This figure is rendered with all the distinguishing features of an anonymous man-in-the-street, the sort of person who is wryly referred to as your average Joe Bloggs. He is depicted here holding a small transistor radio in his left hand. This simple coupling between man and portable wireless is certainly a common sight in the capital. And what is increasingly common too, is the interference that disrupts the flow of radio waves and distorts the programmes being broadcast in a crackling of electrical hiss and white noise. The distortion is reflected in the man's expression, in the wincing of his features as his natural senses tell him to recoil from the unpleasant sound. The Microsoft emblem, which has begun to appear in a series of Zhong Shan's works, serves to indicate the ubiquity of modern technology, of the energy that constantly buzzes around us as atoms, radio waves and high-frequency signals shoot invisible through the air around us. It is in evoking this sensation in a human grimace with which we can all identify, that Zhong Shan brings brush to canvas in a different way. It is a way which is most suited to conveying aural discomfort in distorted sound. The brush marks are scratchy, the paint surface dry. The bottom part of the painting seems barely finished, and yet if we look closely at the marks describing the face, shoulders and hand, the brush lines are fine, almost the texture of lines etched on copperplate. The harshness of the light that enters the picture plane from the right side of the canvas is also instrumental in causing Joe Bloggs to squint for such brightness hurts the eyes.

There is another new element in Interference that first appeared in Start You Up. Thhis is the tiny "Tinkerbell" that draws the Microsoft banner behind her like a kite in the wind as she flies across the painting. I call her a she for the association that this golden winged fairy evokes with Peter Pan. This further conjures the idea of a fantasy land, filled with fantastical creatures, and the delights of child, particularly boy-hood. However, considering Zhong Shan's work as a whole, I think there is more male in this figure than female. This asexual peg-doll is half way between a puppet and the kind of jointed wooden maquette used to explain anatomy in drawing classes. The puppet analogy is closer to the source of Zhong Shan's inspiration which is a toy that Zhong Shan played with as a child. This kind of small wooden figure appeared early in his work, representing Everyman who has no control over his destiny, the very image of Confucian idea of station as ordained by Heaven coupled with a Buddhist belief in reincarnation; whatever you place in this life, your goodness, benevolence, meanness or spite ill dictate your next rung on the wheel of life. It is not for the ordinary man to question what the Fates have decreed. Thus, in early paintings the puppet-doll is depicted in a multiplicity of ordinary and familiar situations. They perform opera, they dance, the engage in mock battles, even negotiate traffic. In the grand panels As Yet Unfinished Chess Game and Journey to the West,, these puppets have been imbued with more human traits, representing well-known literary and historical characters as suggested in the title. In Journey to the West, the central figures – derives from the novel of the same name – begin to float through the air but all are still firmly attached to strings. They are still held fast like "kites", not holding the strings like the ones who fly them. In fact, what is shown here is not mortals flying kites, but the gods manipulating there "puppets" which also makes allusion to the notion of destiny and fate. In Interference and Start You Up, Zhong Shan suddenly cut the strings, and as in every good fairy tale, every fine fantasy, the one who believes in good, the one who severs the bindings that enslave one being to another, has the power to bring the inanimate to life; this is evidenced from Pandora to Pinnochio to The Strange Tales of Liao Zhai. For Zhong Shan, it marks a freeing of his own thinking in his approach to creating art. A certain liberation of the spirit.

A second significant difference in the later works is a move away from grand themes and story-telling exemplified in As Yet Unfinished Chess Games and Journey to the West, to a less complex and more direct line of questioning the nature of human existence. Zhong Shan has stepped down from the world stage of cultural confrontation and the confused ground where modernity meets tradition, to investigate more basic influences washing over the daily life of contemporary reality. For him, many of these influences stem from childhood experiences and impressions retained as memories from a young age. With Zhong Shan being still fairly young and susceptible to the comic strip invasion of Western MTV-age media, we find a strange visual juxtaposition between deliberately jaded overtones of a bygone Chinese age and modern icons like Bugs Bunnie (Ah --, 1997), Sylvester and Tweetie pie (The Awarded Cat, 1997). Yet Zhong Shan is mature enough not to be seduced in the experience of his young years. The direction in which he begun to head at the start of 1998 indicates an intriguing new vision of contemporary life and mind-sets. If he continues to observe life in this careful manner, we can expect to see him discussed as a wise and sober commentator.