Sexual innuendo connected to the intense flash of lightning is continued nearby. Viewed through a long narrow slot in the wall, a video titled That Lightning shows headshots of women, some of whom are perspiring, making comments such as, “Big or small, intense or mild,” “Lose reason,” and “Stronger and stronger.” They may be thoughts about lightning, but also suggest orgasm. Other works also connect the image of a lightning bolt to sex. Homothermal Animal 1 and 2 embroiders a schematic picture in synthetic lace, which, incidentally, is the fabric of a boudoir. The filaments that make up the lace suggest energy gathering to form a lightning explosion, but the tawdriness of the material undermines this vitality, instead suggesting a lethargic burlesque.

Elsewhere, Chen references German artist Joseph Beuys’ Lightning with Stag in its Glare (1958–85), in which an amorphous monumental lump of bronze, supported by an iron girder, represents lightning. Beuys’ vision for his work was primordial. He proposed the emancipation of society through the natural energies of the earth. Chen contrasts this to contemporary detachment from the natural environment. Chen’s You Keep Some Secrets and Remain Silence (2016) deploys conductive wire coils and a saw-like lightning bolt, insulated from the floor by a wooden chair. It listlessly adumbrates reserved energy: the wire is loosely coiled, and the arrangement casual, bored even, as if its style has been overexposed and dissipated across the internet. In Nihilistic Billionaire (2016), Chen also juxtaposes bronze and iron. A sinuous thorn-like object in bronze looks like it is performing an athletic triple flip as it dangles from an iron support. It alludes to a transmission between earth and sky, but in an affected way.

Only one work attempts an original, visual equivalent of direct experience unmediated by secondary representations, and un-jaded by associations with cultural traces. Lightning on the Hillside is made of long, multicolored zip fasteners, joined together to form a curtain. The fasteners are an effective, albeit funny, metaphor for lightning. The unlikely material evokes something that is released—something wild. The work sharpens the sense of the contemporary disjuncture between images and sensations. These colored stripes don’t look like photographs of lightning, but the act of unzipping them portrays the way that lightning happens: a gash torn open and mended straightaway.

Chen, as was Beuys, is still hopeful about the power of lightning. Even as pictures capturing lightning have evolved and lighting’s discharge has been smoothed into other shapes through the propagation of shared representations, Chen suggests that the experience of lightning through the body, rather than in the eye, is still pure. When lightning is felt rather than seen, its jagged magic is unspoiled and continues to electrify.

“Chen Xiaoyun: 106 Flashes of Lightning That I Collect” is on view at ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, until July 1.