With its cross-contextual reorganization of instinct visual symbols, the Beverage series expands Xu Zhen’s attempts at transforming civilizational experiences with contemporary concepts. Across the sculptures and paintings in this series, ancient Greek pillars, as a symbol of human civilization, are planted onto various classic imageries in Eastern and Western cultures, including Classical sculpture,Chinese blue and white pottery, and scholars’ rock. While displacing themselves isomorphically with straws, these pillars defamiliarize and tease whatever it is they insert into, rendering it both out of place and abreast of the times. The artist uses the everyday action of “sucking” as a metaphor for the interactive relations within humans’ cognition of civilization in the post-globalization era: for instance, the search for a future out of history, the conjuring of illusion by the East and the West of each other, and, not least, the symbolization of the uncertainty and dynamism of contemporary reality.

The life-sized Ancient Roman marble sculpture Sleeping Hermaphroditus depicts a god lying on his side in slumber. This work is a copy of the original created around 155 BC, which was also recorded in Naturalis Historia. The statue was discovered in 1618 in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. In 1620, the Italian artist Bernini sculpted a marble mattress to complete it. At the end of the 18th century, the statue was taken to France, where it is now displayed in the Louvre in Paris.