Chang Feng brought me his curatorial plan and applied for a show in Songzhuang Art Museum. The subject was Art of Human Desire. I changed it for Images of Desire and made some reselections of participating artists. Human desire is innate quality. I knewhe wanted to present the opinion to nowadays society’s indulgence of human desire.Even so, that is the problem of sociologist. What I mean is, as an artist or an artphenomenon, what is your attitude or feeling to that? By which ways will you express yourself? And what is unique of these ways? It is these things that are the matters of art. The works in this show are mainly the segmental and sampling presentation of the society indulgent of human desire, mainly a kind of overripe image. So Images of Desire is not completely accurate. The desires and images are the ones of Vanity Fair, are overripe ones. What the subject wants to express is not the human desire itself, and not the indulgence of human desire in the society. It is the feeling of artists to it and the way they found to express such feeling.This is not a fresh subject. In the winter of 1995, I wrote Pains of Vanity Fair for the Luo Brothers. Spring of 1996, Feng Zhengjie made a show Narration of Skin with the Rotten Skin he paint, and I used peachblossom-like fester by Mr. Lu Xun to describe the feeling of material society in the preface to his solo show. Then it follows the Gaudy Art shows like Public Model, Gaudy Life, and Trans-century Rainbow. From 2000, I started to use "Lan"Chinese Character as asubject to curate shows. In Chinese, "Lan"Chinese Character has two seemingly different but in fact related meanings, one is gorgeous, bright, colorful, another is rotten, decayed, overdo. English word OVERRIPE has similar meaning——too ripe and marked by decay or decline, but no meaning of gorgeousness. Since the 1980s, American-style culture of consumption and aesthetic appetite has affected the whole world. So, since 1980s, artists all over the world have been paying attention to such aesthetic appetite through their art. The prosperous of commerce changes consumption into a standard of value, irritating the rapid raise of human desire. Moreover, modern media, as the core element of consumption culture, whose up-growth changes everything into a short, trendy, and updated worldly appetite. And it shows especially a gaudy, celebrating and even boorish appetite of new-rich in the circle of Confucian culture. After 2000, the presentation of Chinese artists to the indulgence of human desire emphasizes more on overripe smell than Gaudy Art in the middle of 1990s has done. As Zhang Xiaotao, Tu Hongtao, Liu Haizhou, Han Xucheng, Lian Xueming and Zhang Jianjun, etc., most of their works use the metaphorical image of overripe, like Zhang Xiaotao’s rats, rotten strawberry, messy dishes; Liu Haizhou’s piles of greasy chickens; Tu Hongtao’s rubbish dump; Han Xucheng’s body organs; Lian Xueming and Zhang Jianjun’s messy dishes too. Just as Zhang Xiaotao has said: “The overripe images after indulgence are dizzy, which for me are full of fear and turbulence. They are the enlargement of the micro-segmental sample from our ridiculous life, and also our instinct respond to this material society of desire, psychological and physical.” At the same time, they have more and less found a corresponding technique and stroke of oil painting, to show that feeling caused by overripeness, greasiness and rubbish. Wang Baolin and Gong Lin both make body-shape statues with materials which canshow the process of overripeness or fate, dissimilation. Such statues and the process of making them are also metaphorical. The images of flowers, frogs and pigs, etc. in Lv Shun’s works, as well as the flowing strokes on the canvas, make these figurative images more imagist and become the direct loose of his sentimental feeling. Huang Wenya’s picture works made by putting together the detail images of man’s mouths and tongues, looks more like woman’s sex organs than like mouth or tongue. And Zhang Liyu’s works made by sticking together coins, symbolizes sex, power and so on. Works of these two artists are quite clear in meaning, but too direct. Qi Zhonghua takes photos of piles of consumption issues. Ming Ke takes photos of large-sized advertising wall, which can also producefeeling of piling by jointing the walls together. Zhao Juntao combines installation and performance, creating the feeling of gaudy, new-rich and transitory by piling and blowing burst colorful balloons.Pang Hongwei put the photos of building sites onto the nails, comparing urbanization to make-up. Xing Bo paints the city landscape of debauchery gorgeous and foppish, and puts the city landscapes into injector, comparing the VanityFair to a dose of incitant or other drugs, which is metaphor too. In the most works of these artists, the metaphor of the world indulgent of human desires is related to rubbish and piling.Such method let us think of the traditional Chinese rhetoric method Bixing, and is a subject of Chinese contemporary art which can be deeply discussed.Xue Tao uses newspaper as basic material, wringing or weaving them into differentshapes, which is not only recycle, but also a release of feelings. Jiao Xingtao enlarges different kinds of commercial packing with sculptures, the highlight of which is a special emphasis on his own attitude——the packing reproduced are no after Oldenburg, but the enlargement and reproduction of commercial packing having been kneaded. This is Shu Yong’s description of his sculpture of breast: “In the Patriarchal Society today, breasts can change one’s life to a great extent. People tried their best to refine breasts. From the ads of breast enlargement and refinement in different kinds of medias, and from the facts of many women venturing their lives to do breast enlarging operations, we seemingly feel the importance of breasts is uncommon.In fact, breasts are unlimited exaggerated in desire by politics, economics and culture. Under such background,thesize of breasts becomes sensitive and fragile.” Smooth, clean, fragile like glass, and inflated like bubbles, this is how Shu Yong manipulates these huge breasts. They are not only breasts, but also a metaphor of the feeling that the desire inflates too much toexplode at every second.Putting Shan Zhulan’s works in this show is not quite accurate. Her works remind us famous Japanese feministartist Yayoi Kusama, but with more gentle feelings. The feeling of sex in her works cannot be included into the desire I said above. Her works make us feel like being surrounded by special female sensitivity and softness. Also, it is not completely proper to put the works of Wei Yong in this show. Although his works feels rotten, but a little more like horrifying allegory. Of course there are quite many artists who fit for this show, but it is too late to invite them because of the limitation of timing and material resource.