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Zhan Rui’s works form a great disruptive force to the visual experience of “artistic works” that we have been used to.

It is universally acknowledged that through the accumulation of our visual experience in the thousands of years of human history, the strong knowledge system has already been established, regarding what is “art”, what is not “art”, how we “perceive” nature, and how we “represent” nature. Such a knowledge system is so powerful that when we are confronted with the relationships among the self, nature and knowledge, we tend to succumb to the inertial force of the “knowledge system”, thus placing “self” and “nature” on the relatively secondary position. In this case, “knowledge” has become a “second nature” that is independent of man and nature, and has its own logic basis of existence. Thereof our doubts emerge – is the intellectual behavior of human beings merely a continuation of representing “knowledge”?

Since late impressionism, people have gradually felt unsatisfied with this type of passive means driven by “knowledge”. A typical means, with Georges Seurat as a leading figure, features using ways of scientific analysis to repair the visual habit that the “knowledge” system has enforced upon us. Another means, presented by Paul Gaugain, is to circumvent the knowledge structure as constructed by the “civilized” society, and use “anti-intellectual” ways to tap the inherent intellectual potential of human beings that has been fogged by “knowledge”.

In recent years, using iconological theories to deconstruct our habitual system of visual logic has become a common practice. When the art market joins this trend, this means has been turned into a pattern, and then further degraded to cliché.

Thanks to the extremity of his means, Zhan Rui’s works have developed into complete conceptualism. In his works, all subjective judgments of the visual experience have been abandoned. He turns himself into a tool existing solely for fulfilling some "natural law". Variations in weather conditions and changes in the stock market, for example, are matters of objective existence that are independent of human consciousness. What Zhan does is portray the existence of these changing phenomena only by visual means. Looking at his works, one may wonder, are these portrayed the “objects” that he wishes to represent? The answer is again – No! In these works, he just discovers a kind of “basis” which he is unable to control by his own consciousness, but which he has to "seek a basis for".

From this, we may realize that when we face the “works” of Zhan Rui, all the “rules” on which our judgments are based no longer exist. Are these "paintings", or "devices"? We may even doubt whether or not they can be labeled “artistic works” at all. However, these doubts are not the essence of the issue, for "form" is but a "shell" that Zhan utilizes. What he wants to convey is exactly a quest into the role existing visual knowledge system plays in offering us experience support in a state of seemingly "having something to base on" but in fact, losing the entire "basis". Our conclusion is perhaps – "it" is so fragile that it won’t even withstand a single blow!