In an era when relations of production are over-virtualized, the close connection between human beings and existing things is gradually weakened, replaced by the symbolized and standardized appeal to the explanation of production. It is a surrender to speed and time in an environment of ultra-efficient construction, and the result is ultimately the separation of the human body from the material. People thus forget how to "poetically inhabit".
What is "Wohnen?" When Heidegger questioned how human beings should exist in the state of existence, he first proposed the concept related "Bauen": first build a physical residence, and then survive in it. But the purely utilitarian Bauen does not guarantee Wohnen: people come and go from their homes, but not their minds. From this point of view, Zhou Zizheng's artistic practices first abandon the functional orientation of "Bauen" and transfer his concentration from "Wohnen" to "Versammlung".
When dealing with “Versammlung” taken from its original state, “Stellen” is first developed as a single word: it can be interpreted as a noun "position" or as a verb "place". There is no doubt that its meaning includes the direction to the other, namely the "Versammlung" of the object and the "man" of the subject. "Stellen" connects the subject and object as a medium, and the result is "Herstellen" a collection of objects. In Zhou Zizheng's works, "Herstellen" takes place in the aggregation and dispersion of things. The universal natural law is its internal logic, and pure conformity with common sense is its combination method. However, behind these methodologies, there are also artists' breakthroughs in the boundaries of materials. On the basis of the objective observation of "object" characters, Zhou is trying to obtain the perceptual experience of specific materials in an empirical way: for example, by constantly raising the firing temperature of the glass, he gives up the control over the preset shape of the glass. In this way, that is, a boundary-breaking "Herstellen" means, the artist tries to obtain the form of glass beyond the stereotype, so as to redefine the gaze on glass: if something is stripped of the symbolic value dominated by instrumentalism, will its original state be manifested in a more functional form? Can the real meaning of things be liberated from the appearance and illusion of this illusory world?
First of all, it's not an intentional simulation. All the mechanisms of the fibrous cloth or bread-like texture in Zhou’s works are acquired by accident in the construction and softening of the glass. When fired, the addition of the same material leads to different results because of different ingredients inside. In the final presentation, glass, as an established "thing", becomes the reflection of other "things" that do not include itself. Seen from this perspective, the object is free from the constraint of self-projection, and the material itself seems to have the self-growing dynamics of an organism and simulates the new object as the other. With its own variability, "thing" challenges the subject to "estimate the nature of things which is too poor since ancient times", and then leads the viewer to establish the original relationship with things. Defamiliarization treatment of conventional objects is the romantic emotional care of the artist beyond the criteria of industrial manufacturing, after which "Stellen" is adopted as an action.
In the exhibition "Herstellen", the idea of “Stellen” is still within the realm of common cognition. The process of "Stellen" is for the reduction of content in human intervention conditions, as a result, the metaphor content under natural state and industrial state double present: the piece of art, both as a content collections or composed of art exhibition as a whole, which combines the natural and industrial. In "Blue Ring and Meteorite Water", the window glass is still placed in the "window" position, giving the "window" illusion function, but it makes people feel the static ripple caused by the rubble hitting the water surface; To look at it on a larger scale, the insinuation of falling stone caves in "Indeterminacy of Three Square Tube and Lump" and the insinuation of the triangular prism in the fibrous fabric materials common on construction sites are juxtapositions of the natural scene and the industrial scene in our conception. The works use a seemingly different expression to restore our stereotyped impression of the world. However, in this representation, the unity of materials paradoxically points to some universal commonality related to the essence of things. From the perspective of wholeness, the exhibition constructs the whole field of things and makes the individual work consciousness perfect itself in the intertext with the field.
In this vast space, it seems that "Stellen" generates the boundary between different things, but eventually, we will find that there is no boundary between them. If there had to be some zen to this end, it would be: clear water is boundless, the rocks have spirits, all things are quiet and silent, and the truth is self-evident.