Sculpture-Arnold Schwarzenegger

Height: 220 cm, Weight: 150 kg (2006-2008) Material: silica gel real hair

The global financial tsunami caused by the financial crisis in the US reminds us of the bloatedness and fragility of the huge empire. So I used the super American icon Arnold Schwarzenegger as the subject of this sculpture and turned him into an extremely fat and bloated figure, combining a strictly realistic style with a touch of black humor.

And I named this work “A Fable of Meat: Arnold Schwarzenegger”.Though a super hero and icon in the US and the rest of the world created when America, as a super power, was at its peak, Arnold Schwarzenegger looks extremely fat and bloated in the sculpture work, which is a metaphor for the too fast development of the US.

As anything would take on an opposite course of development if pushed too hard, the US now is a bloated US and the whole world looks like a tired and sick person. We can clearly sense such developments after the economic crisis started in the US. In the sculpture, every hair and piece of skin of Arnold Schwarzenegger is created in the most realistic manner.

If we touch the figure, we could feel the soft and warm skin and flesh. We can even hear it breathing. When we look at the emotionless eyes of the sculpture, we don’t feel funny or absurd about its obese figure. Instead, we feel a sense of uneasiness and somehow, we may even feel afraid. Why would we have such a feeling of fear?

Is it because we have a fragile heart or don’t have any confidence in ourselves? We may wonder: is this how the icon and hero we admired several years ago looks now? When we see our icon in such a realistic and strangely fat state, the impression is seriously different from our existing perception and experience.

By creating such a big discrepancy, Shu Yong encourages us to reflect upon the current international community led by the US.

We’ve seen the loss of faith, the decline in morality, the shifts of ideals, the distortion in humanity and the alienation of values…The beliefs, morals, ideals and America that we respected before seem to turn into excessive and useless fat that comes with bloatedness.

This sculpture is a work of extreme virtual reality that combines a highly joking style of the artist with a strong sense of anxiety. Thus this work by Shu Yong represents an international world that is defined by the alienation of all kinds of weird relations in the globe. That, I believe, explains why we feel a sense of fear when we look at this sculpture.