ZHONG CHENG

With a certificate of authenticity signed by artist

Provenance：

Illustrated：ILLUSTRATED: \\\'\\\'YANG MAOLIN-Canonization of the God-the Pure Land of Maha\\\'\\\', Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei, 2006, Page 19

Exhibition：

Exposition：

When I took these subculture icons from outside Taiwan, like Astroboy, Ah-Qiang, Dorothy, the Pokemon Pikachu, reincarnating them as spiritual figures with their hand mudras and background halos, it was the first time I ever gave voice in a direct, concrete way to my ideas about the ideologies of our hybrid culture. In formal terms, this is a series of individual copper sculptures, and when I substitute these cartoon characters into the traditional poses of Buddhist statuary, at first glance they may not seem too different from them- in fact they may have a greater peach and solemnity than normal Buddha. But these ppieces are a continuation of the thinking behind my earlier wood sculptures, in the sense that they all end as installation works. The Bodhisattva of the Great Buddhist Paradise series continue from the Chin Zhong Xian III works, but on the one hand are not subject to their limitations in size and scale. They can be huge and I shape them as I wish. On the other hand, the pale glow of the polished metal connects visually and emotionally with the sense of benevolent inner strength in the Buddha image. In the color finishing process, my specialty is to add a painted effect that produces a rich variety of coloring you rarely see. It’s one of the small pleasures of this difficult process.