'Love Me Do'Size: 70 x 78 x 162cm
Medium: cast and hand-cut polished metal
Edition: 20 + 4AP
Shi Jianmin is an accomplished master of traditional Chinese art techniques. You would be excused from failing to realise this when beholding Love Me Do, however, since this work rests on no giant's shoulders, being a titan unto itself and a separate chapter in the annals of artistic endeavour. It pushes the limits off the edge of the planet. But which one?
Quicksilver rivulets spill forth, the hunting appendages of cave invertebrates, to engulf unwary quarry upon which their species predates, waving out in spasmodic spurts as each waves and rotates, jerking in triumph when it locates its prey. From another angle, it flows with the willowly grace of an adolescent girl sitting, head dangled, the wallflower at the ball - since one and all fear her effulgent pulchritude? condemned by her own beauty to sad solitude. Take another step to the side and see the rearing cloud cobra, wreathed in its own envenomed breath's penumbra. Crane your head: it's a temple in the Killing Fields of Kampuchea, rent by relentless tree roots returning to reclaim their lea. Then blink and watch a Messiah rise from a pyre on a pillar of angel fire lofting like a spire. It's the lay of a forgotten hero on a silver lyre strummed unstrung, the impetuous earthworm twisting in the hot sun. It's the solemn column over Nagasaki when the dire deed was done. Toulouse L'Autrec fainting from absinthe while painting Hyacinthe, a whore with dwarfism who quotes an aphorism that ends in a pun. It's a squiggle, a wiggle. Watch it wriggle like an eel in the Sargasso Sea. Turn again, a kneeling geisha giggles, her hair in a bun. Another turn: it's a rainbow rocket vaulting from a prism gun. It's the aftermath of the battle which neither army won. It's the dolled-up debutante who is ready for some fun. It's poets hanging from the Qa'aba for inspiration in the time of jahilliya before the revelation of Allah was come. It is the total of all things and of all things the sum.
Then it turns again and is once again whatever you see.
When you sit down upon it, then you too become free.
And it turns again and says, 'Now you have to love me.'
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