The Australia-based Chinese artist Shen Shaomin, seemingly a maverick in real life, stocks up in his studio with ghastly animal bones. A good command of this distinctive raw material – also a metaphor for death – facilitates his search of a spiritual world which has been long floating afar. In fact, Shen adopts a less-material approach to highlight the quality of spiritual value. Constantly skeptical about the mundane social rules, he casts a stare at the starry sky from time to time. With a silent attentive listen paid to a remote echo down from the prehistoric world, artist goes into and ponders upon the fortune of all creatures the Earth bears and rears, which is reflected in his work as a classic-idealistic perfection and a near ruthless visual pursuit as well as the pure persistent humanism of an intellectual.

　　I

　　Shen first showcased his bone-made installations in 2003. Following a fictitious strategy, he has fabricated a body of skeletons of some unidentified beings which might have never existed. Initially the works which were produced with bones of vertebrates – species close to human life – underwent systematic procedures as professional as those of an international museum, and eventually enjoyed the installation no different than the display of ancient fossils. Whether from the large animal as cow and sheep or from the small rabbit and rooster, bones – after being rearranged, installed and reshaped – were fixed in a configuration as strange to viewers as the skeletons of some unknown beings. Unknown Creature – Three-headed Monster that came out as his first magnum piece has three bullheads to compose its own and its framework bears an inscription of artificial characters and signs. At the first sight, it will trace back the unforgettable eye shock one has had in a childhood visit to the Jurassic dinosaur fossils at the museum.

　　His boyhood imagination was set alight by a chronic enthusiasm about the pixies and beasts registered in The Classic of Mountains and Rivers. Jaded with time, it faded away, frozen in the depth of his memory. And the memory in turn was activated later during his days in Australia. Thanks to the quantum leap in biotech, Australia together with developed countries in Europe and America conduct experiments on animals in efforts of renovating the life. Since clone and genetic engineering are approximating the perfection and generalization, more and more attentions of media and general public are caught and controversy is sparked over the outrageous experiments performed by advanced biologic laboratories in these regions. Besides the social benefits, biotech goes beyond the morality and ethic with an unprecedented alteration and mastery of lives, which is followed by disquietude about the disorder of species and the ecological disequilibrium. White mice with human ear, rats with human brain, and possible products of this kind come off the cross-group experiments and they are quite akin to the monsters in Shen's eyes. So he fears that a hazard of eating away and replacing the terrestrial lives is brewing with the rise of artificial beings as a would-be new breed in the consumption-oriented society. Then will one day humankind and other living things struggle on the verge of extinction?

　　Under the condition that the global economy and culture is driven by the capital market,

　　Shen Shaomin keeps a skeptic view facing the ongoing problems in hopes of handling the issues of ultimate concern. In the wake of the incident 911, people have lost their faith in ultimate concern and are turning more interest-oriented, which, as Shen has perceived, has thrown the world into a spiritual crisis. But a watchful mind enables him to stay aware of the fact in our society that terrestrial lives are being affected by experiments conducted by human in want of a vanish happiness and ideology. Such situation must influence, standardize and restrain people's social practice. And in addition, it is going to associate with everyone including artist himself. Therefore, being more single-minded than ever, he moves on with a unique insight – creeping beneath the foams of vanity, transcending the individual value – and based on the actual reference he reinforces cultural reflection in hope that more attention will be drawn upon the spiritual homeland as well as the evolving civilization. From this macro perspective, Shen embarks on an investigation whether animals should have had their own living right reserved or whether they are entitled to refuse to be crossbred. By staging the over-modified the animal skeleton, artist suggests and questions the side-effect of the technology progress. And his query goes directly to the core of human beings' selfishness in which they neglect the safety for all terrestrial creatures when chasing the health and joy. When it comes to Unknown Creature 10, Shen depicts a virtual vertebrate with bone-made organs and limbs, akin to flies and mosquitoes but multifold larger. In this series, Shen has perfected his use of the original bone-powder molding technique – bone-powder plus glue makes a most striking plastic formula of his sculpture materials. Given a certain shape and dimension, he can create what is in his mind without fail. Thanks to this technique, his art shot from the mere restructure of skeletons to a free-of-mind creation. No doubt the laboratory-based technologies fuel his imagination, and he himself initiates his non-stop predict on outrageous outcomes of the biology experiments. As long as there is specie in this universe which can be patterned, Shen will restructure it through simulation and later determine the formation of the skeleton depending on his deduction of evolution. In his practice, he complies with his illusions – whether from his consciousness or subconscious – in case these fanciful images are new to evolutionary development. Shen's human creation resonates with the creation of the Nature by bold distortion, fiction and even groundless invention, which empowers him to play God. And his creatures may some day come into being, though at present alien to the history. Accordingly, the potential that artist presents in form of visual sample, intrudes into the public view and memory with a perilous uncertainty, and forms an objective criterion for the blind utopian enthusiasm.

　　The unknown hybrid of animal and vegetable featured in The Experimental Field 2 (2004) is actually grounded on his concern and worry about the forthcoming mutation. In the glass containers – loaded with industrial salts – grow 50 cabbage-like plants which bear in the middle of each ossified leaf a skeleton of a freaky backboned animal. It seems those freaks are hatched, raised and then develop on the leaves, for two parts are linked by the veins of leaves. A counter-utopian and alienated visual presentation of this kind helps the work shed some light on the internal chaos of the hideously progressing biotechnology. As if in a frozen instance of their growth, all the unknown creatures with a fossil-like appearance seem to tell the sudden coming of a doom day. However, artist's prophetical forward-thinking made the future society a reference for this art piece. In a witty fashion, Shen first neutralized the opposites between life and death as well as history and future, and later sent his work beyond the reality. Consequently, he drives his art creation all the way to the ultimate concern.

　　II

　　Judging from Unknown Creature – Dragon (2004), Shen Shaomin has got a perfect command of fabricating the mythological figures. Dragon symbolizes the Chinese nation. But it lives only in ancient myth and has never existed on the Earth, as modern science has confirmed. Since the work corresponds to the historical and cultural norms, Shen attempts to disclose another facet of his criterion which agrees with his stand by questioning and deconstructing the European museum system. Unknown Creature – Dragon was visualized through fabricating a complete dragon framework and bringing the dragon off the sky so to speak. In the making were employed numerous cutting edge technologies in terms of heritage restoration and fossil remolding. And the use of the plastic bone-powders revived the physiological characteristic of ancient lives. Moreover, a museum display was borrowed to construct a saline area where dragon bones used to be excavated. In reality, to forge a high-profile mythological animal in Chinese traditional culture Shen has to test the feasibility of new archaeological techniques in an effort to realize a false-to-real transition. No doubt it works out as an open cultural fiction. Or rather, an anticipated fiction, which he brings into the contemporary exhibition system, underlines the legendary aura of the fiction by means of a bold invention of myth figures. In other words, he is forging a new round of culture legend. But his ambition is more than this. What he challenges is the classic pattern in the international culture exchange; more exactly, the modern museum system that rose with the European colonial expansion and later snowballed throughout the world.

　　Still part of Commonwealth of Nations, Australia used to be a colony of the Great Britain. The life in Australia teaches Shen the history of colonialism and the influence of post colonialism. In the past, with the discovery of new continents and the rise of the colonialism, the international trade grew dramatically, the cities expanded and the capitalism boomed. The societies of metropolitan states in Europe required knowing and studying the other world overseas as well as the culture of their colonies. So the museums which contained vastly information in many aspects and academics were built under the influence of the Enlightenment movement and formed the assets of modern knowledge. The museums began to stock the valuables from the colonies. In 1798, the Expo in Paris exhibited vast products of the colonies over Asia, Africa and America, showed a typical exoticism. The Expo at that age was literally the collection of the museums, which had a great influence on the concepts and aspects of life in modern societies. The Expo also established a system for the exposition and biennale. After the national revolutions of the colonies, museums even once became the tools for the newly librated countries in Asia and Africa to strengthen their cultures of nations in replacement of the traditional temples and shrines. Museums, Expos, exhibitions and fairs, as the cultures originally from Europe, are now globally become one of the most important icons of modernism, which include art museums and exhibitions. Since 1980, Chinese contemporary art is exhibited in museums and art biennales in Europe and America, and also accepted in their values in these countries, and even led a Chinese fever for 10 years. Since 2000, the exhibitions were blooming in China, the most prominent of which is the 3rd Shanghai Biennale. These are the cultural background for Shen Shaomin as well as many other Chinese artists. While the museum systems were embraced by most majorities of the artists in China, almost no one would think of the origin of the system or the feasibility of its formula and globalization, except Shen Shaomin. He was the few who doubts and rebels.

　　Shen shows his thoughts in depth in the expression and presentation of his art. His points of view are expressive in his art which intentionally changes the form of creatures in order to confuse the viewer's common knowledge and aesthetic expectation and his well designed fictitious culture deconstructs the foundation of the museum knowledge system. Further more, he even fakes to overseas to mock the unreasonable centralized Europe/America matters in global culture exchanges. He lives in the world which centralizes on Europe/America culture on both present museum system and by annual exhibition. But he keeps his sharp senses and knows deeply that the hardest part as an artist in his way of expression is the myth of museum system. The museum system always acknowledges itself as scientific, all part or representatives of the system as Tate Modern, MoMA, Venice Biennale, Documenta, provide us with the most sensitive description and foundation of the criticism of its art pyramid. The museum system itself becomes the grandest myth of modern art and spreading amongst people in the past, in present and eventually in the future. The Europe/America museum system as top of the pyramid always encourages their system of culture. The artist who wants to be exhibited to value himself has to face the shadow of the museum system and finds the solution by himself. But each artist who dares to challenge the museum system must face pressure from the traditional cultural system. Shen believes that once the art of an artist accepted by the museum system, it would be absorbed, familiarized and eventually annihilated. While the criticism and challenges outside of the museum system are naturally pointless, the most effective way is to fight fire with fire. So he decided to create new myth against the myth of the museum system.

　　Shen is facing a great challenge of finding his characteristic way of expression that sets a new example for futuristic cultural practices and has its meaning and value in creating new cultures. Only by that, the ideological dominance and covering of the old cultural system could be broken through and a real cultural force could come into existence. Regarding the current museum system, he first takes a critical attitude to cut into the artistic expression content. Therefore, his way of thinking and behavior principle are not bound and regulated by the American and European exhibition practice. His personal work is like using the force against him to beat back to where it comes from: he takes full use of the flaws and loopholes inherent in the current museum system to form his characteristic way of expression targeted exclusively at the content of museum. Shen Shaomin occasionally gathers fossil conservator, paleontologist, animal physiologist and orthopedic surgeon in his studio located in Daqing to co-diagnose the plan for an art piece. He sticks to discussing with the experts about the organic activities and rules of ancient, present and future lives, in an attempt to figure out artificiality and regularity in the physiological constitution of made-up creatures' skeleton. His creation is not a simple composition but almost a result of genetic mutation of nature creatures. His original works based on mythological figures are also created according to his knowledge of ancient creatures in the full light of modern science. A reality-bound emotional impulse captured by the artist is associated with the art expression and content and ascends to the management of individual context. His narrative turns from the macro to the concrete and later reaches the detail while his plastic vocabulary undergoes three phase – intangible, tangible and eventually supernatural. His visual language hereby goes more characteristic. As far as Unknown Creature – Dragon is concerned, Shen first rearranges his expression and approach by addressing that the belief of prehistoric tribes was the cradle of the ancient mythologies. And then guided by a most typical discourse he enters the halo of the museum legend where he fuels the conflicts and confrontations brought forth by heterogeneous cultures. The consequence of the collapse of altar and its legend maybe is what Shen hopes to see.

　　Followed the Unknown Creature – Dragon, the watershed in his creation, comes a prolific period in which Shen has launched a new line of myth-based items, specially tailored for museum system. Although bones and bone-powder remain the main formula in his ingredient this time, he has changed mind to build a supersized family tree for those prehistoric virtual beings. He tries different figures – be it Centaurs or the thousand-handed Avalokitesvara – and reshapes them. These remolded frameworks all add to his visual arrays. Later his attempt reaches the physiologic specimens. In 2005 a new series of specimens were made on the basis of Dragon and Avalokitesvara. The work represents the physiologic circle of the embryo. Here the rational analysis was introduced. Regarding the configuration, he covers all aspects of the making. For instance, he weighs a lot the homogeneity the virtual figures and his contrived myth system. On the other hand, he is engrossed in a rich narration of the details. In fact, the modern museology has nourished his contrived cultural system which gives an index to the mythological beings. And his system is juxtaposed in his work with that of natural/historical museums on the basis of the evolution theory. In a self-created context, Shen refined a unique style and is striving for a clear logic in the discourse system, while eyeing on a long-term cultural campaign and criticism. In this sense, his rebel in culture is more constructive than counter-cultural concerning the oppressive system. His myth-based new series has been touring to art museums in China and Europe, college museums in America as well as some museums in Asia and Australia. During the course, he never stops his reinforcement of the context strengthen and sparks the public topics respecting social sections and classes. Enacting queries of the discourse on museum and a parasitic grip of its domain, he endeavors to pilot the inception and establishment of a cultural fictionalization.

　　As an artist who worries about the biotechnology, challenges the legendary museum system and runs his virtual system, Shen Shaomin has proved of ever higher social responsibility and ingenuity. Taking bones as media in his works, Shen borrowed the nature phenomenon to conceive a supernatural figurative system. Accordingly, through the public interpretation and free association, he concluded his individual and significant contribution as an artist to the society. A concrete narrative is one of the points that make his creation stand out. In the context that he develops and broadens, those lifeless skeletons – all came out through his hands - can go so far as to exemplify the culture conception of a certain kind.

作者：Gu,Zhenqing