New Substance 

1997, Beijing; 350x180x50cm, brick, machine of massage, iron

​

In my previous works, I was concerned with the extension of the materials that I was using from a giving concept, or with the extermination of the social implications or characteristics that the materials carried. I tried to find the extreme limits of the possibilities of a piece of ordinary material or of an object and create a particular characteristic by combining objects in a strange way. Combinations like this can arouse an audience's psychological reaction of "surprise", but they are only superficial and have no content. Also at this time, I was interested by moving images, such as images of human and animal figures created by computer animation, virtual "three-dimensional" figures that are animated but lifeless. They create an "amazing world" and for me, the essence of this "amazing world" lies in its superficiality. I tried to achieve this effect in this work by adding motion to the original form. Any eternal concepts related to walls and bricks no longer exist. The work became a "living object", a new substance appealing to our visual sense.