Earlier Works
Shi has been known to break away from his typical steel structures. 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. The idea of the exhibition was to critique disposable consumer goods.
Shi's Tree Motorcycles (2008) consisted of a tree for the frame and working motorcycle parts on the inside, making them drivable. “I dreamt that a trunk with a big light was running on the road.” Shi Jinsong said in an interview. “I just wanted to know what a big tree – which is four or five meters long – with a speed of more than 100 km per hour looks like.”
Shi also created fancy metallic motorcycles to show in the 2008 Shanghai Biennale. Shi was included in one of the first groups to participate in the exhibition. He created his own humorous logo name, “Ha Ke Long”, for his motorcycles which resemble Harley Davidson’s. The logo was based on the words “halong-kellong” and “tuolaji”, meaning "walking tractor" in Chinese. The motorcycles, carved with symbols of the dragon and phoenix and equipped with karaoke and video instruments, were meant to be driven around the museum by a muscular man dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Famous quotes containing the words earlier works, earlier and/or works:
“The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love.... It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier world?”
—William Morris (1834–1896)
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)