“Eternity” is a series of sculptural installation that fuses together and immortalizes classics of art history and great civilizations. Statues of Greek gods or Chinese divinities and modernist sculptures are replicated using mineral composite, taking on the form of visual hybrids. “Eternity” brings global civilization into a broader perspective against the East-West cultural collision, showcasing the influence of the traditional Orient and the modern Occident on contemporary life. The juxtaposition of two visual experiences provides a unique sensory perception of cultural heritage. The tension of forms and aesthetics between the East and the West, the ancient and the modern, the figurative and the abstract creates a timeless classic moment.

Moai are monolithic human figures carved in stone by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Although theories about their origin abound, their true significance remains unclear. XU ZHEN® juxtaposes their replica with Kiss (1912) by the renowned modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. With their seemingly primitive energy, unknown human statues from the past are teasing contemporary cultures' imagination of foreign civilizations. In the juxtaposition of the two, the apprehension of reason towards the incomprehensible is at once palpable, and yet in the next instant appears to be dissolved in a human comradeship that spans time and space. The artist thus mockingly exposes the fundamental relativity of the subject and the other, progress and primitivity, familiarity and unfamiliarity in civilizational narratives.