Shi Jinsong
b. 1969, ChinaShi Jinsong was born on 1969 in Dangyang county, Hubei province, China. He lives and works in Wuhan and Beijing, China. Through his razor-sharp sculptures and related works, Shi Jinsong initiates a dialogue, at once menacing and ironic, between the forms of mythic Chinese culture and modern day globalization. “Na Zha” is here recast as the brand name for an outrageously unsafe line of baby products. Meticulously assembled in stainless steel from intricate mechanical drawings, they include a deadly Carriage; a sadistic Cradle; a sinister Walker; and a malicious, multi-part Toy complete with needle-tipped pacifiers and dismembering abacus. Baby Boutique confronts its “shopper” with a radically strange and seductive “product,” lethal luxury designed to reveal the forces that dominate our lives in unimaginable ways.
Born in Danyang County, Hubei Province in 1969, Shi Jinsong enrolled at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 1994, majoring in sculpture and mastering a gamut of traditional techniques. Under the influence of three powerful stimuli - radical socio-cultural change in China; a reading of Foucault's Madness and Civilization; and the birth of his first daughter - the artist began to investigate ideas of transformation and control. Featured in Alors La Chine, a groundbreaking survey of contemporary Chinese art mounted at the Centre Pompidou in 2003, his sculptural installation A Life of Sugar (2001) consisted of aspirational material objects made of sugar. Designed to melt over the course of the show, the impermanence of the objects served up a delicious critique of disposable consumer goods.
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