Zhou Xiaohu at Ethan Cohen

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

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

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

Much 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; on the body's surface a drawing of a woman comes alive. Originally undressed, she finds a bikini, plants flowers and does a pole dance. Eventually, the male torso transforms into a female torso, from whose belly button emerges an animated man who climbs a ladder and engages in a sword fight. The drawings on the torsos play with the whimsical potential of the figures rather than casting them in momentous news events. These videos were vastly entertaining and more or less overwhelmed Zhou's propaganda-style paintings of prostitutes, kidnappers in Iraq, and diplomats. It is clear that Zhou's strength is in animation and that his large ambitions are best realized in this field.

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group