Zhou Xiaohu started working in video in 1997 In this.

Zhou Xiaohu started working in video in 1997 In this, his first solo exhibition in America, Zhou showed a cluster of paintings and several late videos. Most of them claymations, the videos address, among other issues, the part of the media and the force of guidance in society.

The major piece in the exhibit to Crowd Around (2003-04) comprises 10 short dramas lasting 11 minutes altogether. The narratives embrace a wide range of situations involving many times violent spectacles and crowds. At his trial, Saddam Hussein's teeth are remov with pliers; a perch dancer is viewed by a large audience of anonymous men A heavily pregnant woman is split explain yielding a large baby; this rather raw show is repeated so that eventually there are three large babies resting forward a table.

Numbers of folks witness an assassination and an electrocution; in the two cases, the figures involved are Western in their features, in like manner that the events have more than a specifically Chinese cast. (This may have been a way for the artist to criticize his agriculture without giving away that he was doing so) In single in kind of Crowd Around's most distressing and effective narratives, we descry the destruction of the Twin Towers, with its exodus of nation and massive blowout of dust and debris. This and several other animations are based forward media footage of major events

often lighter in nature is The Gooey Gentleman (2002) a four-minute video that combines live action and animation. It begins with a naked male torso; upon the body's surface a drawing of a woman draw nears alive. Originally undressed, she finds a bikini, plants flowers and does a rod dance. Eventually, the male torso transforms into a female torso, from whose belly button appears an animated man who climbs a ladder and engages in a sword fight. The drawings forward the torsos play with the whimsical potential of the figures rather than casting them in momentous stranges events. These videos were vastly entertaining and more or les overwhelmed Zhou's propaganda-style paintings of prostitutes, kidnappers in Iraq, and diplomats. It is clear that Zhou's puissance is in animation and that his large ambitions are best realized in this field.

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