Uncertain Separation of Vision:
A Brief Review on Zhong Shan’s New Works

by Li Xu
February 27 2016

Surrealism and Pop Art

Born in 1971 in Guiyang, Zhong Shan began painting in his teenage years, and in the autumn of 1991 enrolled at the Central Academy of Fine Arts to study mural painting. His education at the Central Academy took place just after the 85 New Wave Movement had drawn to a close. Although this vigorous avant-garde art movement has already passed, for most of the artists who developed outstanding practices after the movement, that period was a golden era, during which these artists, who later became recognized internationally, matured their artistic language and style. With a foundation of diligent and industrious study over two years, Zhong Shan was capable of fusing his developing painting technique to his thematic interests, with his imaginative approach reaching the canvas with many freely composed dream-like images. His artistic expression was enlightened by the modernist Surrealist masters, including Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, but he was also noticeably influenced by Academy painting faculty members Cao Li and Tang Hui. After graduation, Zhong Shan continued as a professional artist; from 1994 to 1999 he experimented in genres ranging from Surrealism to Pop Art, employing diverse artistic languages that combined the fantastic and grotesque in conjunction with cartoons, computers, cyborg insects, marionettes, ancient warriors, temple ruins, and township characters...... This diversity of imagery juxtaposes the macro and the micro, couples archaeology with science fiction, overlaps the imaginary and the real, and contrasts the everyday withthe exceptional.

Silk and Numbers

Zhong Shan’s experience of living in Shanghai from 1999 to 2008 contributed to innovations in his practice that extended beyond traditional easel paintings, initiated with works that integrated diverse materials onto transparent light boxes. Later, he turned to a conceptually based non-figurative process that incorporated Arabic numerals onto silk. Initially, Zhong Shan densely stacked tiny numbers into realistic outlines of surreal images. Eventually he abandoned completely the representative image, replacing it with the pure rendering of the numbers 0123456789 in a continuous stream to form a repeating numerical cycle that filled long silk scrolls. With such an extraordinary effort of repetitive labor, this Zen-like practice gained distinction for its expressive technique,and the work was selected for major exhibitions including Metaphysics 2003: Shanghai Abstract Art Exhibition (Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, 2003) and Prayer Beads and Brush Strokes (Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, Beijing, 2003). The original abstract numbers, in their final synthesis on silk as the material carrier, are suspended in a vertical hanging that depicts an invisible concept in a tangible physical mass, with the elusiveness of time stacked as a physically evident memory. Furthermore, the transparency of the silk allows light to engage in the overall visual effect of the work, and foreshadows for the viewers significant insights that will inform Zhong Shan’s future projects.

Double Images

In 2004, Zhong Shan began a seven-year project on a series of paintings titled “Double Images.” After his return to Beijing in 2008, this series became a primary focus for his work. The images used in his paintings are in bilateral symmetry and bidirectional coordination, while the pictorial narratives are developed through progressive mutation and variation. The juxtaposition of the two images' form and content is complementary and intertextual, reflecting both symbiotic and parallel connections, while still establishing a relationship of paradoxical conflict. The “Double Images” series represents a return for Zhong Shan to oil canvas paintings and realistic representation. The “Double Images” are highly symbolic, despite the absence of clearly identifiable distinct forms; the series discloses a profound aspect of reality hidden in the seemingly ambiguous content. The works use the relationships betweenpeople and objects as a starting point, with the further focus of the series being a consideration of complexities below the surface and a reversal of causality. Through the persistent exploration of the series, Zhong Shan gradually comprehends that what he creates in his visual imagery should transcend the parallel surfaces and juxtaposition of relationships possible in two-dimensional space and be transformed absolutely by superimposition into three-dimensionality. He set about on a new program before the “Double Images” series is finished and his artistic expression has since expanded to an unexpected, new level of space-time experimentation.

Separation of Vision

After 2010, due to his inexhaustible curiosity, Zhong Shan again transformed his creative approach; he began to introduce a distinct multi-layering to his works, with images produced on both sides of a translucent material comprising a single work. Some of the layered figurative forms and landscape elements correlate, while other have obvious dislocations; selected elements are strongly highlighted, while others have dreamlike characteristics that initially recede from the foreground only to later re-emerge. Things only suggested are contrasted with forms boldly outlined, and collectively this reinforces a sense of strangeness and mystery, deliberately creating unexpected encounters. The rules governing these formal variations change with specific contents. Unique concepts require specific materials. Hence, Zhong Shan has reintroduced silk; combining realistic images with experimental use of a material, which leads to a series of stunning visual experiences. The relationships between emptiness and form, light and shade, front and back, identical and reverse are, in the agile hands of Zhong Shan, all turned into viscous, loose, or translucent strokes, with the light transmitting from the back or coming from the front, eventually becoming intangible visual and psychological experiences beyond words. The ancient organic fiber of silk is revived in Zhong Shan’s artistic creations with this traditional cultural material obtaining a new unexpected vitality in his works.

During this period, we can clearly see in graphic information of Zhong Shan’s works the integration of diverse sources. They include collective memories from student days, famous city landmark buildings, gas-mask clad pedestrians in smog, ordinary scenes of déjà vu appearance, floating human bodies, and portraits of Che Guevara, Marc Riboud, and Cui Jian: a complex range of image resources with diverse cultural allusions. Through these unique arrangements and combinations Zhong Shan’s special individual interests and thinking in recent years is revealed.

In work produced recently over two years Zhong Shan reveals a fascination with a form of “fragmented voice” as found in common social media. A superimposition of images results in constant ambiguities, with floating elements shifting through different works; vitamin-capsule-like figures filter out unnecessary contents in one scene, and manifest themselves in the form of WeChat dialogues to highlight significant information in others. Although everything within the painting seems to relate to a visual ontological methodology, the focus is completely subjective and individual. Zhong Shan states that none of his latest works can be completely controlled; therefore, his process of creation continues to be exciting, and is accompanied by unfolding discovery, and the inexplicable does matter in the visual arts, precisely because it allows the viewer a broader understanding and experience of space.

Alternative Ending

Even though we have a high volume of daily visual experiences, specific environments can function with extremely limited elements. The emergence of these elements in the moment of encounter with the artwork is purely a matter of chance, rather than resulting from an overly rational process. In fact, daily life provides a visual experience with a variety of hidden details in shape, color, contrast, and rhythm; if we could carry out a kind of soulful archaeology of these experiences, we would bedazzled by what is to be found in these precious discoveries. In a cognitive process, we often cannot avoid the habit to categorize and summarize, and tend to not consciously and rationally seek the relevance and meaning behind the image. Nevertheless, the essence of the world is naturally complex, while the human development of things is prone to running in the opposite direction against reasoning. Perhaps the best way to understand our familiar but absurd world is by admitting to the existence of confusion and uncertainty. Though confronting and uncritically accepting such uncertain visual experiences causes discomfort or a sense of unfamiliarity, by taking a new look at the surrounding world, we may acquire an awakened consciousness and a renewed sense of existence.

Some film directors when releasing DVDs or Blue-ray Discs of their films provide the option for alternative endings in the playback menu. This is possible because two or more outcomes were shot originally, while cinema audiences are only able to see one ending officially approved by the producer. With these new media formats, directors can now more fully express their multiple creative intents, and in doing so leave viewers with more options. I chose Alternative Ending as the theme for Zhong Shan’s exhibition of new works precisely because the works from the outset were not intended to have a single reading. Actually, no particular set of steps are necessarily the correct way or should lead to a sole interpretation; the means of appreciation vary from person to person, and it is always an individualistic process that holds optional, alternative, open, and uncertain paths.