When Li Shan took part in the Venice Biennial, he was shocked by US youth artist Matthew Barne's work Loughton Candidate, which is half beast and half human. It was so different from other works. For Li Shan, this is a stimulating and overthrowing language. After he returned, he began to think and draw some sketches and got insights for designing Reading series.

From 1996, he was deeply attracted by this subject. He spent a lot of time reading literature and textbooks on this. At the same time, he finished the translation from conceptual art to biological art. Li Shan's "Reading series" is an interpretation of genetics and biology. Here he bypasses his regards to human body and begins to think of creatures such as a fish and insects. Here or there human beings can be seen. But human figures are combined with creatures. We can see parts of human images in creatures and vice versa. Li Shan's bio art goes through the following stages: 1.  creatures plus none creatures, that is, use fur of animals to wrap moving no organic objects such as automobile and airplanes; 2. insects plus mammals, that is, fusion of genes of two species; 3. human beings plus micro creatures such as insects, that is the combination of human beings with other creatures; 4. create new biological species through gene engineering, e.g. his recent work "Pumpkin".


From《Hosane 2009 spring auction》