Shi Jindian's 3D CJ750 Blueprint in steel wire at the White Rabbit Gallery
Accurate right down to the old fashioned side valves inside the engine, Shi Jindian's blue wire and fine filigree sculpture is a full scale, three dimensional blueprint – of a an astonishingly accurate rendition of a Chinese copy (Chiangjiang [Yangtze] 750) of a Russian copy (Dnepr) of a German copy (Zundapp) of a bike based on a pre-World War II BMW motorcycle with a side car.

After searching for years for “a material that was brand new, completely untraditional”, Shi Jindian (born in Yuxi City, Yunan province, 1953) settled on steel wires. By trial and error, he learned how to crochet the two-dimensional strands into three-dimensional forms, using tools of his own devising. His wire meshes start out as wrappings around some common object. When the mesh is complete, Shi Jindian destroys or extracts the object, leaving only its steel exoskeleton.



The result, he says, is a kind of fiction, a virtual reality that can be walked around and touched. Surrealist René Magritte painted a pipe along with the words: “This is not a pipe.” Shi Jindian does something similar in sculpture, making not-quite-replicas of items from musical instruments to machines. His Blue CJ750 (2008)  took him three years to make, but he found deep serenity in the toil. When people touch his sculptures, he says, they also touch “the state of mind that emerges from the labour of my hands: tranquillity and calm”.

Found via Chris Hunter @ BikeExif who found it via Mike Jones @ Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle

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