| Unlike most noted experimental artists, Shen Shao-Min did not receive a formal academy education. Instead, the starting point of his artistic path was completely by way of another course. First, he participated in the production of visual culture for Cultural Revolution, then organized artistic propaganda for the masses—including drawing posters, making slide shows, and screening films—and finally “elevated” onto the professional track. In terms of the development of contemporary Chinese artists, Shen’s path offers a rare example of the “Chinese experience.” | 
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Wu Hong
Shen Shao-Min, Experimental Studioââ¬âEgg. 32 x 29 cm. Courtesy of Oriental Vista.Unlike most noted experimental artists, Shen Shao-Min did not receive a formal academy education. Instead, the starting point of his artistic path was completely by way of another course. First, he participated in the production of visual culture for Cultural Revolution, then organized artistic propaganda for the masses—including drawing posters, making slide shows, and screening films—and finally “elevated” onto the professional track. In terms of the development of contemporary Chinese artists, Shen’s path offers a rare example of the “Chinese experience.”
Shen Shao-Min grew up in Acheng City in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast of China. His father excelled at carpentry, and as a child Shen enjoyed handling things and taking them apart. Whenever he encountered a mechanical bearing or a timepiece, he would be tempted to dismantle it and study its moving parts. His renderings of these spare parts perhaps constitute his earliest experience in “re-creating images.” This interest in skill and technology was one of the main reasons behind his love of printmaking: of all the types of art, this was the one most like a “craft.” He recalls his first woodblock print being a set of playing cards given to an elderly neighbor. In order to simplify the reproduction process, he carved three round cakes, nine long strips, and other patterns from a slab of wood, including the 108 heroes from the Water Margin, and then printed them one at a time.
Intense involvement in the Cultural Revolution positioned his interest in art on a unique trajectory. He was an active member of the school’s art organization, and took part in spray painting the great leader’s portrait on windowpane after windowpane. The “porous printing” process used at the time was still based on prototypes of high contrast prints. His “works” from that period mostly entailed portraits of Mao: stalks of sunflowers gathering around the red sun—fixed in the hearts and minds of the revolutionary people—and surrounded by resplendent rays of light radiating in all directions. His design and execution of a Tiananmen relief sculpture particularly revealed his artistic talent and imagination. He first made a rough sketch of Tiananmen on a piece of cardboard, then glued layer upon layer of sawdust on top of it. When it reached the desired thickness, he finished it off by applying bright colors to its surface. This kind of work earned him a reputation locally, and also foreshadowed his entry into factory propaganda work and film distribution. In the interview, Shen couldn’t help but express astonishment at how these early experiences have influenced his new artwork. Although he never intended it, these latest works seem to revisit that vanished period in his life. Tiananmen returns again to a familiar topic, wherein “blueprints” and “models” make an important reappearance, and the interest in the mechanical also appears vividly in Kowtow Pump, Bonsai and Fighter-X.
While these four pieces reflect on “revisiting” the past, they do not repeat it. The difference between the two is that a “revisit” is a critical return wherein previous experiences not only serve as motives and sources for creativity, but are also the subjects of the artist’s examinations and analysis. Tiananmen is not only a rendition of this famous architectural structure, but also a deconstruction and reconstruction of what the artist considers the “consummate” monument. And although Fighter-X is the final realization of a dream that the artist has harbored since childhood—that of designing a fighter plane—the work also transforms a child’s fantasy into a callous, aggressive plaything of war. The “kowtow pump,” previously a symbol of state-owned enterprises, appears in Shen’s work as a twitching, convulsing machine. Its stuttering movement dispels its heroic spirit, and communicates the struggle produced by the modern world’s exhaustion of its energy sources. That nervousness and sense of tragedy also appear in Bonsai, where basins of small misshapen trees, chained and fettered to metal instruments, recount the price paid by man’s pursuit of “beauty.”
