April to June 2011 in Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, SHI Qing implemented his project Plant Republic during the exhibition entitled Guanxi: Contemporary Chinese Art. By imitating ecosystem and organizational structure of plants, the artist achieves his own methodologies for self-observation, categorization and systemization. The relationship between the configuration of the work and its components renders the simulation of "wildness" by SHI, who counterworks with this concept against "systemized system such as parks or botanical gardens" and therefore reflects on the system established by modern science.
Subsequently in October 2011, the artist finished Plant Republic 2 in Guanxi exhibition in Today Art Museum in Beijing. Between the conformation of this very piece and complicated structure of "wildness" that is Plant Republic, there lies probably certain connection. Both control and loss of control during implementation constitute his production. By discussing the possibility of validity of artwork, SHI offers his own answers to the question that under which condition an individual becomes a ecological system: the model of the power of community in paralleled system as well as the description that "a community rests on external organization rather than internal integration where multiple individuals co-exist constantly at distance".
Wild and parallel: Here is a plant structure as ecological and systems organizational perspective, thus we don’t need a method, but a way of organization. It is a method of art self-observation, organization and preparation. It is definitely not an isolated and fragmented work in the system concept; The wild is against the plan in advance, against the advanced concept, emphasis on self-organization, grow, develop and open at the same time. Concepts is a practice start, neither a reason, nor a result. No cleanliness, no single style in the work, no reason and support within the system. Only the difference can establish an effective ecological structure. Community is an external organization, not an internal integration. Multiple singles exist and individuals keep in distance.
Detail pictures:
