The Gate of Animals was created for a solo exhibition of the artist in 2014, with the exhibition highlighting on the various focuses of the artist throughout different stages in time, including his imaginative thoughts for the universe and the future, familial memories and his mother’s impacts on him, and also thoughts on animals and the body. The Gate of Animals is intended to act as a portal for entering into the creative emphasis of the artist in the recent years.

Three doors in classic styles are created utilizing the artist’s familiar medium of stainless steel, with their shapes derived from a sketch by Michelangelo. Michelangelo had drawn a unique sketch of different stylistic doors he had designed, with the doors overlapped and drawn together in an asymmetrical manner, resulting in an entrance that can’t simultaneously exist in the same space. The sketch is an expression of the spirits and dimensions highlighted in Mannerism.

I have deconstructed and extracted from the sketch these three doors, and reconstructed them with the use of frames. The doors are lifted from their supposedly cumbersome quality from being made with stone and are overlapped to be embedded together, offering a space of multiple angles for seeing. On top of the piece are 50 realistic and imagined animal forms, which are presented as cute and dainty symbols, representing a spiritual arena and also reflecting the artist’s exploration with embellishment, memory, and space.