October Gallery first showed Xu Zhongmin‘s delicate depictions of ancestral Chinese houses in woodblock prints on paper, in 1995. These prints later gave way to a novel set of larger works in which the pear-wood blocks themselves transformed into a novel sculptural medium. Between the late 90s and Xu’s eventual return to Beijing from London, in 2004, the City of Dreams series developed. Continuing Xu’s focus on dwellings and architecture – both traditional and modern – this developing series commented on the housing boom that spread across China during that same period. City of Dreams No. 10. makes direct reference to Baudelaire’s poem, in Les Fleurs du Mal, where the poet, in a fantastical revery, encounters strange apparitions wandering the metropolitan streets of Paris in the 19th century. The four panels of this work show spectral figures floating wraith-like through a vertical city of high-rise apartment buildings. These phantoms rise and fall within the phantasmagorical city, which is notionally outlined in a low-angled isometric projection that also recalls Eliot’s description of the sprawling post-war London as an “unreal city.”
Within this ingenious blending of illusion and reality, Xu’s recurrent themes shine through: the paradox of progress; the repetitive cycling of life and death; and the enigma of the individual’s place within society.