Double-Image Space

by Pi Li
September 2007

As an artist born in the 70s, the Zhong Shan's way of thinking and acceptance of new ideas is quite special. Earlier artists grew up in a world in which words were the main media, but now, with China's opening up and development, the so-called "post-80s" generation has grown up in a world in which images have become the main media. For the earlier generation, because they are able to adjust the speed at which they receive new information in the form of words, they have sufficient time to form their own points of view, and it therefore seems relatively easy for them to develop and promote their own value system. As a result, the elements that make up their work have a clear direction and meaning. The 'image' generation is overwhelmed by visual information however, and their relationship with this information is essentially one-way. In other words, whether you accept it or not, I exist, and whichever way you exist, I will accept this fact in my own way. Comparatively speaking, artists of this generation lack confidence and fail to recognize their public value. They care more about their own unique, private and difficult-to-define experiences. Embodied in their work is a refusal to convey the meaning or significance of the work. Zhong Shan is half way between the image and the word generations of artists, with the characteristics of both. This is why we can see an obvious dualism in his work; it is a result of his age and personality.

In the work named "0123456789", he, as if obsessed by Zen, repeatedly writes numbers on long strips of silk, or reconstructs reality through the use of numbers as his basic image units. This is a work that could have been created with a computer and printer using simple programs, but it took the artist a long time and great deal of physical effort. To the artist, the process of writing these numbers is a process of enlightenment. This type of enlightenment does not have a religious basis, but is more closely related to a theoretical explanation of our realm. To Zhong Shan, the significance of "0123456789" does not lie in its form, but rather in the process of its creation. He understands through action and experience, rather than by thought. This is why we cannot see individual images in the work. Even if there are images, they only serve to act as a type of "framework" for the painting's meaning. On one hand, the artist has given up creating concrete images to form so-called concepts; on the other hand, he has also given up the core speech of concepts in his work. At the same time as eliminating images he also wants to eliminate concepts, letting the essence of the work be conveyed to its limits by the action of writing. He tries determinedly to create or convey something by nothing, and to use individual behavior to clear up social value. He has made his artistic behavior meaningful through the use of meaningless numbers and their orderly but dull repetition. His dualism reveals itself by his refusal of both imagery and concepts. Even when his work is displayed, we can say that his attention to atmosphere and behavior exceeds his attention to the existence of the artwork as an entity. The dualism of Zhong Shan's work is the complete embodiment of the characteristics of his generation: when he refuses to speak, he also refuses to be interpreted by others. He simplifies the relationship between the artwork and its audience to the extreme. So when we are faced with his work it is as if we enter an area of endless behavior and space. The linearity of time in this space is replaced by transmigration. The world becomes pure and there is only the faint sound of the pen nib scratching on the paper.

The arrival of this behavior and its inherent dualism has an even more profound socio-psychological background: the difficulty of self-recognition in today's society. As expressed by some scholars, three elements play critical roles in the cultural development of the 20th Century, and each one leads to excessive population and population growth. These are: man (or the contemporary view of individualism), money, and materialism (or capitalism in the global economy). In this newly started century, we have to look for a new direction to ensure the existence of spirituality and authenticity, and then a new concept of human spirituality will emerge naturally: an aware, intelligent and ecological existence. In the 21st Century, these are the problems that we should contemplate. In this period of modernism, the contradiction between the rapid pace of social development and man's understanding leads to a form of spiritual division. Also in this modern era, people's torment is not the "spiritual division" that resulted from early modernism or industrialized society, but the unique "split personality" of the post-industrial era. In other words, it is the contradiction between social values, diversity of social systems and recognition of individual personality. In a sense, Zhong Shan's work expresses the post-industrial era and the dualism of the split personality.

If the repeated writing of numbers is the artist's compulsive and dualistic mode of understanding, dualism sometimes also takes another form in Zhong Shan's work. His latest paintings are all in the form of double images. One painting describes a scene in daily life, and the other is an imaginative space extended from that daily life. Although the two paintings share the same composition and contents, in certain details they are entirely different. When they are brought together the result is full of fun, humor and satire. In this way, Zhong Shan's work is more like a combination of different psychological spaces within the same physical space. Just as the artist claimed, "My work just aims to show that man inhabits a concrete and real dimension, but maybe, at the same time, there exists another time and space in his imagination that is parallel to reality. This corresponding relationship between reality and imagination simply shows the natural individuality and split personality of people living in this time.

The writing of numbers is the artist's attempt to "discover" himself, and these double images are his quest to understand the psychology of society. If we carefully analyze his pictures, we can see that the artist doesn't treat real scene as a symbol and compare it with the symbolism in his imagination; instead he interprets the real image according to his understanding and imagination of the images in his mind. When we are faced with Zhong Shan's work, we find that these pictures always innocently put us in an embarrassing situation: we are attracted by his pictures and are driven by an unknown power to examine every symbol and detail. When we try to interpret and combine the meaning of some of the symbolism in the work, however, we find contradiction, break-up and overlap, and then the objectiveness of the events and objects in the depicted scenes disappear completely.

Zhong Shan's painting questions us from the perspective of another time and space: Is reality really so solid? Are we really in touch with reality every day? Maybe in today's China, what Chinese feel is not superficial reality, but the collision of the various values and methods behind this superficial reality. If we look at Zhong Shan in the context of his age, style and art, we may discover that Zhong Shan belongs to the type of artists that use all their efforts to break through superficial reality, pass through its cracks and reveal truth of thoughts in his time.