Zou Liang's personal struggle is theme of his new show Zou Liang's sculpture Untitled reveals the lack of communication between people. (Photo for China Daily)
In the past year, Zou Liang's failed attempts to deal with his social life and art creation left the sculptor troubled.
But after about three months of personal struggle, he created an artwork at his studio in Beijing's Heiqiao Village, where many other Chinese artists work or reside. The sculpture, Cold Night, depicts a person curling against a column, and it serves as a testament to Zou's anxiety-filled mind, according to the 36-year-old artist.
"The man isolates himself in a small area and rejects the outside world," Zou says.
A coating of blue lacquer covers the subject's entire body and flows right down to the bottom of the column, implying the passing of three painful months for its creator. The color makes "people feel pure and calm", Zou adds.
"Also, it indicates that I've mostly pulled myself out of the situation."
He displays the work as an introduction to his ongoing solo exhibition, titled Not As It Seems, at the city's 798 Art Zone. The show invites viewers to read Zou's conflicted thoughts and to find their own answers to problems. "So what does the world looks like exactly?" he seems to be asking the visitors.
Among other displays－reflective of that period－is Untitled, a sculpture made after Cold Night, which reveals Zou's "illusions following the self-imposed alienation". In it, two human bodies from the waist up are placed back-to-back, their arms stretched out in a manner of hugging.
"People may think they (the figures) should be face-to-face, holding one another," he says. "Sometimes, we meet someone and think that we may become friends with that person. But it turns the opposite way－we can't understand him or her, and may even become enemies."
Zou was also inspired by Michelangelo's fresco painting The Creation of Adam to re-create a work under the same name now on show. He only reproduces the part where the index fingers of God and Adam nearly make contact. The Chinese artist made a white, smooth hand to represent a younger God, and a black, puppet's hand to portray Adam so as to bring out an innocent feeling, he says.
Show curator Xia Yanguo says: "These days, people retreat to a virtual world they build for themselves. The channels to converse with others have narrowed. It's a luxury to have real conversations with people, which is more or less reflected in Zou's productions."
Zou's works also touch upon universal concerns such the threat of extinction for some animals.
He was commissioned to work for the protection of sharks through an art campaign by Hong Kong-headquartered real estate developer Parkview Group.
During his preliminary research, Zou found that besides sharks and elephants, species of rhino were also endangered. He was shocked to see rhino horns carved into Buddha statues and other handicraft works from some Southeastern Asian countries, he says.
Reflecting, a display from his current show, depicts a small Buddha statue seated on the nose of a rhino－at the spot where the disappearing horn should have grown.
"It's an irony that people take life to make something which they use to bless other with," Zou adds.
The sculpture gets its name from the Chinese Buddhist phrase "mian bi" (staring at the wall while reflecting).
Kim Mi-ryoung, creative art director of Parkview Green Exhibition Hall, says: "He (Zou) silently screams to the viewers that the contradictions exposed in his artworks aren't exclusive to him."
If you go
10:30 am-6:30 pm, through Sunday. Parkview Green Art 798, D09, 798 Art Zone, 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5978-9282.
