Shi Jinsong

Shi Jinsong (born 1969, Dangyang County Hubei Province, China) is a Chinese artist based in Wuhan and Beijing.

He studied at Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in China where he majored in sculpture and mastered an array of traditional styles and techniques.

He graduated in 1994.

He is particularly known for his first solo exhibition in the United States at Chambers Fine Art in New York Na Zha Baby Boutique exhibition, a series of stainless steel sculptures depicting baby accessories—rattle, cot, stroller, etc.—made from razor-sharp blades (Na Zha is a child warrior deity in Chinese mythology).

He is violent and sly and flamboyantly dressed in flaming trousers with fireball feet.

Today, he is associated with lottery, gambling, and the high life and is the star of a cartoon TV show.

Shi Jinsong humorously depicts Na Zha in his exhibition as the “new face of Mothercare.” Shi describes Na Zha as “a supernatural youthful hero who always recovers and refuses to grow up.

He has three heads, nine eyes and eight arms, with blue clouds coming from his mouth, flamed wheels under his feet, and all kinds of powerful weapons in his hands.

He needs only to shout for clouds to turn into rain.

He cuts his own flesh and commits suicide to save his father, fights the dragon king, and overturns the universe.” This is the Na Zha portrayed in Shi's artwork.

Chambers Fine Art described this work as a "dialogue, at once menacing and ironic, between the forms of mythic Chinese culture and modern day globalization".

He returned to this theme for his Secret Book of Cool Weapons, which portrayed corporate logos such as the Nike Swoosh as martial arts weapons.

Shi has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including Shanghai Cool: Creative Reproduction at the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Mahjong at Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, Alors, La Chine? at the Pompidou Center in Paris, and Too Much Flavour at Chambers Fine Art in New York.

Shi's main material is large amounts of stainless steel.

This gives his artwork a gleaming, polished, and cold look with razor sharp edges.

Shi is known for his childcare products and weaponry.

In 2002, his exhibition Secret Book of Cool Weapons transformed common corporate logos into an array of ancient weaponry.

Despite his heavy portrayal of machines in his work, Shi is not interested in modern-day machinery.

Many details and additions seen on his pieces do not even offer any practical use.

Shi adds his own experience and direction to his artwork, giving it a sense of rebellion and contradiction to humanity and morals.

This sets his work apart from the typical art of contemporary China.

Shi moved out of the explorative stage of form and language, saying that “language is of suspicious nature, especially that with characteristics such as the attractive logo of brands as seen in the commercial market.” The mechanical form depicted in Shi's artwork is a metaphor for real life experience.

While Shi's work is not intended to give off a message, he observes social norms and customs with a neutral perspective and then creates a twisted analysis of it.

Shi has a very broad mentality, believing that every thing has many surfaces and directions from which to view it.

This includes his artistic materials such as steel and charcoal.

Shi enjoys exploring different kinds of physical forces, including artificial, natural, and unnamed.

Three major events had an influence on Shi's life: the radical socio-cultural transformation in China, Foucault’s madness and civilization, and the birth of his first daughter.

All of these caused the artist to investigate ideas of transformation and control.

Much of Shi’s work is a combination of mythic Chinese culture and modern day globalization.

In 2003, he presented an installation at the Centre Pompidou called A Life of Sugar.

The installation was made out of Caramel and sugar and designed to melt over the course of the show.

Shi's solo exhibition, Penetrate (2011), was shown at Today Art Museum, Beijing.

Penetrate was a large scale sculptural installation curated by art critic Karen Smith.

Shi used charcoal, wood, metal, and other materials in his pieces.

The giant scale and number of pieces shown in the exhibition as well as the amount of discard involved in the process of replacing new with old and the impact on the environment was all supposed to portray the excesses of modern China.

The exhibition was literally a physical mass.

Shi collected discarded materials and made them into his own artwork.

For example, he took wooden beams from traditional architectural structures and bound them together with old tree trunks, pipes, tubes, and steel joists.

The message of this piece was to be more aware of the harm we cause on a daily basis when we recklessly pursue our interests and desires without taking our impact on the environment into consideration.

Shi has been known to break away from his typical steel structures.