He has three heads, nine eyes and eight arms, with blue clouds coming from his mouth, flamed wheels under his feet, and all kinds of powerful weapons in his hands.
He cuts his own flesh and commits suicide to save his father, fights the dragon king, and overturns the universe.” This is the Na Zha portrayed in Shi's artwork.
[5] Chambers Fine Art described this work as a "dialogue, at once menacing and ironic, between the forms of mythic Chinese culture and modern day globalization".
While Shi's work is not intended to give off a message, he observes social norms and customs with a neutral perspective and then creates a twisted analysis of it.
[8] Three major events had an influence on Shi's life: the radical socio-cultural transformation in China, Foucault’s madness and civilization, and the birth of his first daughter.
The giant scale and number of pieces shown in the exhibition as well as the amount of discard involved in the process of replacing new with old and the impact on the environment was all supposed to portray the excesses of modern China.
The message of this piece was to be more aware of the harm we cause on a daily basis when we recklessly pursue our interests and desires without taking our impact on the environment into consideration.
[16] “I just wanted to know what a big tree – which is four or five meters long – with a speed of more than 100 km per hour looks like.”[17] Shi also created fancy metallic motorcycles to show in the 2008 Shanghai Biennale.
The motorcycles, carved with symbols of the dragon and phoenix and equipped with karaoke and video instruments, were meant to be driven around the museum by a muscular man dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
[18] 2016 Chinese Whispers, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland 2011 Penetrate, Today Art Museum, Beijing 2009 Take Off The Armor's Mountain, Space Station Beijing China Huashan Plan, design courses Shanghai, China Drama Peach Blossom Prose, Shi Jinsong Studio Beijing China A Brick Which Crushed Wang Jianguo's Head Bone, ARCO Madrid International Contemporary Art Fair, Spain 2008 Independent Foot of Crane - Shi's giant free standing foot of a crane made from bronze, along with a similar claw of an eagle, fishbone of a carp, and the tooth of a dog, emphasize the distance between material culture and art through extreme magnification.