Love Armor, Chen Mingqiang, "The Section of Experimental Art at the 26th National Art Exhibition"

The artist utilizes metal objects in life waste, such as water pots, rice-cooker, faucets, keys and spoons. He cuts and patches them together in order to make a wedding-dress for his fiancé. While these mundane objects are assembled to form the bodyline, they reflect a metallic light like armors. People who wear the armors feel isolations from daily life, and they are not going to a romantic honeymoon, but to a war with clashing swords.

Most young people who just entered the society probably feel great pressure of work, love and marriages. In this crazy world of materiality, money is everything, and competitions of consumptions of luxury goods become social norm. This twisted social mentality of competing with others generates new inequality, which causes more twisted minds and depressions. The artist is also a young man who just walks into the society from the campus, facing heavy burden of working to survive, and raising a family. Hoping to overcome these difficulties and to fight back, he has made this love-armor to replace the expensive wedding dress. The couple wore these armors to complete their wedding ceremony, a symbolic ritual that triumphs the material poverty with rich spirits, inaugurating a youth that will fight its way through like in battlefields.