 ot surprisingly, A GREAT PATHWAY TO HEAVEN does not reveal itself at first glance. What is Gu Dexin’s message in this puzzling installation that purports to depict an ordinary street with life-size paving stones? As the title implies, are we to tap dance our way in full costume and song on the magic way to paradise?
Gu’s reproduced street ascends the spacious Shanghai Art Gallery at a 25 degree angle to the windows that face the river, the Pudong skyline and the sky. Gu has achieved his uninterrupted heavenly vision by building his street up to the window-sill. The viewer wonders, is this all that there is to it?
Retracing one’s steps and viewing the street, which is studded with 27 cast iron, meticulously reproduced manhole covers, one can peer through their holes and see slimy red muck oozing below. Retreating to one side of the street, there is an authentic metal storm drain grate. Through that grate one can confirm the previously-- glimpsed red slime as well as maggots.
 Turning from this disgusting vision to the other side of the gallery street, one can glimpse an appealingly Mediterranean blue pool. This long rectangular pool contains what looks like intense shining clusters in the distance. Is this the antidote to the polluted and disgusting street? Yet approaching the pool dissipates the mirage. On closer inspection, the beautiful blue pool has no water and is covered with huge clusters of giant black flies whose wings sparkle in the distance.
How can one interpret this powerful installation? Is it a Western Biblical reference to the corruption of Sodom and Gomorrah? Or does it refer to the historical reporting of corrupt Chinese officials at the end of a dynastic cycle when the Emperor has lost the mandate of heaven? Chinese media fill their pages and airwaves with stories of corrupt officials all over the world and especially locally, such as the former Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai. The stories in the daily press feature the new consumer class, the newly rich, and how they parade their wealth, spending in a most outrageous and ostentatious manner and behaving as if they were above the law. Is the artist commenting on the current national situation or is it a global comment indictment?
Is this what are we are doing to ourselves and our planet? Are we ripe for the apocalypse? Is the artist giving us a sign? Gu Dexin doesn’t answer his puzzling work in words, only clues. Gu has a history of presenting microcosms of our decaying world by assembling fruit and vegetables in a gallery for a month and allowing decay to overwhelm the space. He is also famous for kneading pieces of meat for a week at a time till they are completely broken down into something else. His current effort is a more powerful societal comment that we cannot ignore.
 Joan Lebold Cohen, author of The New Chinese Painting, specialist in contemporary Chinese art. Her website is located at: www.joanleboldcohen.com
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