Untitled (Fang Sheng Vase) No.1 borrows the visual imagery of the classical ornamental motif of Fang Sheng. It has been commonly applied as anti-burglary grilles on windows for domestic use since the 1980s. Comprised of two identical diamond-shaped patterns with angles piled up, the geometric structure of symmetry and continuity adapts to solid modelling and the corresponding configuration of space. It is derived from the hair accessories worn by the mythological figure “Queen Mother of the West” in the Book of Mountains and Seas and was later applied for brocade design; also influential to furniture and architectural design, including the vessel shape of bronze and ceramic works. When implemented as window panes, it is often combined with other ornaments.

From Liu Chuang’s perspective, Fang Sheng of such longevity demonstrating a certain sort of “collective contract” can reflect the disqualification of modernity in China’s modernisation. Through appropriation and restitution for artefacts, the Fang Sheng vases from the ceramic town of Jingdezhen hanging upside down with coloured lighting thus transform into lanterns, decorations becoming utilities. Not only that, the vases arranged in parallel rows make the graphics of Fang Sheng projected upon the ground overlapped and juxtaposed, conforming to its original architectural fabric.

In the narrative discourse of “Shanghai Dandy,” Untitled (Fang Sheng Vase) No.1 under the guise of “lighthouse” introduces the historical landscape being gazed at by the outsiders and bears the very beginning of the urban legend, while the reconstruction of image from the inside represents the reflection on the hybrid culture generated in the city. It has greatly confirmed Dandy’s stand of value and basis for action in the exhibition. If Dandy’s indirect practice is seen as a conceptual field of ambiguity and ambivalence, the defamiliarisation of Fang Sheng by the artist is precisely a valid attempt to break the fixity of private viewing.