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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“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)
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“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)