The Reappearing King Kong Rhino
– Consonance to Deity Rhino
| Shih Li-Jen
Tracing back my memory, to the time of far remote, to whom I were, and I was thinking what did I tend to expect for my future when I was little?
The first scene I can recall was all about a Longyan tree.
There was a small place under a Longyan tree standing between the fields which were with one another. It was my favorite place. There were little recreation in those years, and what I loved to do was getting a table and a chair to there for sit, with papers and Chinese brushes to draw and paint aimlessly, or occasionally grabbed a lump of soil making figures. During the play my desire arose in my mind and I have known that there was a broader world awaiting me in the near future. I couldn't help but think what were I going to be when I grew up…
The lump was being figured into shape between my hands, and I wanted to step into the world of art, and explore it extensively! I insisted and said to myself: I want to be an artist, and vow my lifetime wholeheartedly to contribute to the beauty of art.
After many years, I started my career as a gallerist, an art dealer, a private curator, and a director of art museum. There were so many important exhibitions I held for many well-known masters, and little by little, my name is given more and more attention for public. People knows who I am, but they don't know how important art creation is to me and has always been taking a great part of my life, my hobby, and my daily life no matter where I go and what I intend to make effort. But since then, my works, rhino sculptures, appear one after another in Taipei, Taichung, and southern Taiwan, and even in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shandong in downtown areas. Everyone including children loves to gather around my rhinos and taking photos. Sometimes I have a fantasy that my rhinos are so vivid that as I am having a walk outside, and we meet on the street while my rhinos are strolling. Since then, I got a new lovely nickname: Rhino Papa, a rhino sculpture artist.
People often ask me, why do I love rhino so much? What an interested question! Rhinos have existed on earth for more than sixty million years, and they are one of the world's most endangered animals nowadays. They are quite sci-fi that they mostly associate with monsters and beasts. In whimsical Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar", they are featuring the embodiment of justice, the guardian of the natural ecology, and a symbol of the spirit of humanistic concern. The cultural relics, ancient books, bronze vessels, jade articles, old chinas and so forth which are stood for Chinese civilization ranging from each dynasty all defined their understanding for rhino: In an ancient book published in pre-Qin, The Classic of Mountains and Seas or Shan Hai Jing, a classic compilation of Chinese mythology involving detailed descriptions of god and deities, animals, plants, herbs, culture, geography and so forth, it documented in the chapter of Classic of Regions within the Seas,
"The Si-rhinoceros dwell east of Shun's Tomb and south of the Xiang River. Their form resembles as ox that is blue-dark with a single horn."
"Northwest of the Xingxing dwell Xi-rhinoceros. Their form resembles an ox that is black."
The book clearly indicated the features of rhinos and the geographical location of where rhinos live. Therefore, it is believed that rhinos had existed in ancient China. The Classic of Mountains and Seas is more than a book of mythology, and a valuable reference for ancient geography and animals.
Ritual vessel (zen orgui)shaped rhinoceros – one of the noble Seven Liangshen Bronzes – was recorded a reward from emperor of Shang Dynasty for a hero who conquered tribes in western China - now collected oversea in Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. In Warring States Period, Li Bing and his son built an irrigational infrastructure called Dujiangyan and buried and placed five stone rhinos in five directions as a form of pentagram for cracking water spirits down and praying for a safe home for residence. In imperial dynasty of Tang, thousands of tribes flooded in to pay tributes, and a tribe called Lin Yi offered their local rhinos as tributes. Emperor Taizong built guardian stone rhinos and dedicated to imperial tomb of his father, Emperor Li Yuan. As above all, they offered rhinos misty and mysterious stories and those uncertain and vague deity characteristics strongly attracted me that made me seeking anything concerning about rhinos and follow their tracks whether now or past as if I am in love with it. Rhino is not merely an object for creation for me. It is as a path connecting history and ecology with one another, and the more I explore deeply, the clearer the mystery of creation is unfolded right in front of me.
The reason I choose rhino for creation is not only for its unique feature, but also it is a symbolic deity beast gathering composition of the universe for ecology, technology, culture and history. Or to make a long story short, rhino is a creature which is very loyally faithful, and when it is in love, it means forever wholehearted lasting an entire life.
Same as all the other artists, the way I create rhinos and express the point of view does not fall in at one time. The art works talk for what I had learnt and absorbed from life and experience, and represent my thought simultaneously of the year they were created. When it comes to rhino sculptures, most people immediately associates with the 888 centimeters tall sci-fi image, King Kong Rhino at Kelti Square Taipei. It tells that my works started from very graceful forms in my early stage, which is inspired by Henry Spencer Moore who was best known for his pierced, or contain hollow spaces, and undulated form, and generally affected on my previous sculptures of smaller rhinos such as Fuk rhino and so forth. Then in further research, I realized that perhaps I can recreate the old image with new soul if I learn how to reform the classical daily tools of the bronze rhino statues of dynasty of Shang and Zhou based on the concept of contemporary art.
I love speed, the wind blows, and the illusion fast transited. Riding on the Harley motorcycle, approach the speed, and hear the wind roars makes me feel completely free and well-being that any difficulties on earth will turn into a speedy engine and accelerate even faster and better. Today, technology brings us an entire different world beyond the past, and we are the generation who is particularly experiencing the impact that it brings to our daily life. These firsthand experiences for technology becomes message which was planted into my contemporary artworks and future creation to transforms my sculptures into a minimalist, hard-edged, structural and emblematic significance, plus to interpret the old wisdom to create contemporary artworks.
Creation guides and leads me to find out that I am as little as a dot in the tide of history travelling back and forth, or a trace been laying on the tide of history and ecology. In the meantime, my footprints keep moving forward toward to the future, and have my experiences for decades all extracted and cast into the spirited horn to look ahead. Once the responsibility for inheriting the tradition and creating the new has carried, there is an admiration I have been seeking to achieve for ages: To integrate the classic with the modern, to create the classic classical. If everyone was born for their own destiny, and the series of King Kong Rhinos were born to metamorphose classical into brand new contemporary art. Later on the sculptures of "The Impregnable Rhino", "The reappearing King Kong Rhino", "Swift Horse", and so forth were created all inheriting my style but in various appearance.
When focused all my attention on creation, I hardly remembered when the time is. It is just what Confucius had mentioned, "A man who in his eager pursuit of work forgets his food, who in the joy of its achievement forgets his sorrows, and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." Gradually half of Modern Art Gallery became my place for early creation, and when friends came for visits and usually found me in a certain place molding or painting. One day I was chatting with friends and talking about our passion for art individually, a friend of mine asked that "You have been holding many reputed grand exhibitions ranging from western and China, and have you ever thought about holding a solo exhibition for yourself?" I was astonished and totally awake from his concern. My rhinos were collected little by little and placed in Kelti Square in Taipei, in Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Center in in Kaohsiung, in Ji'An Park in Shanghai, in Weihai in Shandong, in Yunjinghu Lake House in Miaoli, in Calligraphy Greenway Square in Taichung, and etc,. My rhinos have been travelling worldwide with my blessing, and shall I hold an exhibition elaborating my view for those who support and love my rhinos?
I am sixty years old this year. According to the definition from a Chinese philosopher, Qian Mu, he explains that in the age of sixty, a man's ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth with heart. It is just right into the consonance between my heart and soul. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven, and for those years I have held several exhibitions. Nowadays, I eventually back to my favorite and my dream of art creation, to do what I love, to be who I am, and to follow my instinct. It is a change in the age of sixty, and I have to stop to hand and hold myself a solo exhibition for my life. My desire and pursuit for art is the same as the destiny of King Kong Rhino which is just emphasizing my dream for art that will always be the same.
Been involved in artistic career for decades, I trace fleetingly back to where I started, to the place under a longyan tree in a countryside where I lived for childhood. I was holding a lump of soil and so engrossed in making figure that only breeze blows be heard, and the shadow of the tree covers me and my very first dream. That moment is forever and ever.