Ideas behind my 1st and 2nd self-initiated project

There are so many contrasts in modern society: people from two sides of the world can be connected easily through social media, but we are not communicating with our neighbors any more; we can know how a place far from us looks like by searching videos and images, however, we will have to use Google map to find a place very close to us; we invent very advanced camera in order to capture the details of the world to the most authenticity, but meanwhile we use Photoshop, beauty modes to conceal our original and natural appearance...Is everything working for their initial purpose, or completely diverting to the opposite? There is no certainty in answering this question. I personally feel that we are living with increasing confusion. On the one hand, convenience brought by high technology to our life massively broadened the temporal and spatial realm that we can reach. But on the other hand, we are locked into our daily routine, required to follow our schedule with punctuality, subject to all the existing regulations and rules without much flexibility. All these contrasts need our deeper insight into them. Taking account of these unique characteristics emergent in the modern society, I was strongly tempted to explore and understand how our physical, social and spiritual being is shifted in order to adapt ourselves to the contemporary life with all these rapid changes in technology and mentality. 

My first self-initiated project is targeted to reflect our physical being, mainly physical appearance. With the advent of smart phone, taking pictures happens everywhere all the time. The social media gives us more opportunities and freedom to present ourselves, as a result, we saw a great number of selfies online with almost perfect image qualities and figures. However, the perfect picture is no longer displaying the objects and figures with any sense of reality. I have no interest in seeing these perfect images any more. No matter how advanced the technology, material and design will be, we finally have to face the original and authentic self, which we can conceal from others, but not ourselves. This idea gave me the motivation to build up a series of images which reflect the very details of the human body in the way how they really look like. I chose photocopying as the medium to make this idea come true. There is increasing popularity in displaying nudity, but what if even the nudity cannot bring any more authenticity? I don't want to exploit my body for any purpose, I just want to make a reproduction of my body and transform it into images with the fullest revelation.

During the process of photocopying, I got a big passion about metal and I am fascinated with its inherent resilience and strength. The human history is accompanied with the exploration and development of the use of metal. Human beings are made up with pure flesh, bones, blood, tissue,...I would like to create a human statue with metal. It doesn't mean anything related to human being in the biological sense, but it is made of my bare hands, it experienced transformation and rebirth.

I focus my interest on the social and spiritual life of contemporary human being in the second self-initiated project. I cannot tell exactly what will be the most essential point to shape our collective memory about the society and life since the second half of the 20th century, but what is commonly shared by people is the rapid transition in terms of mobility, interpersonal relationships, mass culture, high technology brought about by modernization and globalization. I will do paintings here because I want to illustrate the major essential point instead of replicating the real life with vivid details. It's a sketch and outline of reality, and the size of space limited by the painting creates an overwhelming atmosphere. These typical images in our everyday life in modern society are intensively presented through the paintings, which not only seized the sense of reality, but also brought the audience above the reality through the humorous depiction with comical effects.