With its cross-contextual reorganization of distinct visual symbols, the “Beverage” series expands XU ZHEN®’s attempts at transforming civilizational experiences with contemporary concepts. Across the sculptures and paintings in the 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.

XU ZHEN® plants an ancient Greek column into a classic Chinese blue and white porcelain vase. The two symbols of ancient Eastern and Western civilizations collide to produce an essentially contemporary visual experience, as well as an interaction with cultural cognition. The insertion of the "straw" into the vase strips the latter completely of use value, while the column is rendered disproportionate and out of place for being placed in the vase. Cross-con- textual cultural symbols try to suck from each other while becoming the other's parody, perhaps only to draw out one's own illusion of the other. The artist thus deploys civilizational experiences and contemporary concepts in a way that they constantly refresh each other, while seeking to suck out brand new imagina- tion of a post-globalization future.