Epidermis

20.5 x14 cm, 90 Pages, Novel/Hu Fang, Painting/Chen Wenbo, Hunan Art Publishing House, 2003, ISBN 7-5356-1942-8, 2003, ¥ 19.00

Epidermis depicts the illusions and despair in the relationships between a young man, his lover, his lover's pet as well as the architect who designed the pet's abode. In the day, the man is a white-collared worker; after hours, he becomes a drifter in a different space in the city/life. He maintains an appropriate distance from his lover, and embarks upon travels to different places in order to collect source material for consumers, which are then processed and sold. When he invites an architect to design and construct a “Fifi” house for the pet Fifi, he experiences an intense sense of release and rejuvenation, and cannot resist sliding a knife through the epidermis of Fifi. There is beauty in pain...

Epidermis reflects a world that has lost its stability due to over-consumption. It is a world can only recover its sensory abilities through medication and domination/subjugation relationships – a landscape that is man-made, distorted and depleted of its sense of reality.