Almost all human motions are enabled by the messages communicated and controlled through the nerve endings. Sensory nerve endings acts as a receptor of stimulations from both within the body and the outside world, motor nerve endings communicates nerve impulses to muscle tissues and various glands, thus enabling humans of their facial expressions and motions.
Nerve impulses are the messages and commands created in the brain under stimulation, it is a summary of all the emotions and psychological activities in man’s body, and therefore it is closely tied with the human psyche and reflects man’s psychological nature. Their changes and the messages they receive can directly affect man’s surface feature, such as fear, anger, painful, depression, light-heartedness, happiness, ecstatic or even being carefully emotionless.
The artworks of Jiang Zhi combines the fictional and the realistic in his discovery of the physical and psychological changes brought through the emitting nerve endings, he also shows his interpretation of the corresponding concepts in the realms of Social Political-Economics. It is hard to categorize Jiang Zhi’s work, as an artist of profound social solicitude, he depicts the pain and hurting within a well-designed environment, finding and exhibiting the realistic absurdities in front of a troubled and melancholic backdrop.
His recent artworks touch upon and try to explain the connection between physical changes and true emotions on a social level. The works “Trembling”, “0.7% Salt” and “Maiden, All Too Maiden!” tries to reflect upon the social science context which exist behind what seems to be simple and everyday life. In his photographic work “Maiden, All Too Maiden!”, dozens of young girls from different social background brought together as a group all giving a different girlishly-shy expression, giving off a deeply strange sensation, it is designed to enlarge the familiarized surrounding, in a heightened level of expression, these expressions are given new means and interpretations.
In photographic series “ A Time to Dance”, “Hurray” and “ A Time to Rend”, the artist continues to explain how the nerve endings affect man’s receptor system. The heart and the genitals are rays of light penetrating and stretching. In almost a sadistic state, certain desires deep in the physical body and the psychological world are woken, thus giving the ray of light in the darkness a new meaning of violence and desire. The light now becomes evil and blood-thirsty.
Almost every inch of the oil painting “A Beam of Light” is covered in thick and even darkness, a ray of light penetrates the darkness, at the end of the light ray, a small human figure is obliviously adrift. In another photographic series “Things Would Turn Illusive Once They Happened” the main subject matter is also the ray of light that comes from no-where, for mankind, light gave wisdom, but in Jiang Zhi’s works, light brings pain, it is a burn on man’s nerve end.
Therefore it could be said that nerve endings have a heat temperature, this temperature which surpasses its physical form can be felt in Jiang Zhi’s artwork and it will directly effects the audience. No hints of superficial social reflection or history determinism can be found in Jiang Zhi’s art discourse, though it brings with it criticism. In the end it all returns to the individual, the process takes place in a specific context and makes careful consideration on the language of expression. The upcoming Solo Exhibition of Jiang Zhi in Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok will bring forth this temperature which comes from the nerve endings; it is essentially a survey of humanism.
