Rewriting the profound discourse on life and death in Lu Xun’s Old Tales Retold, the artist constructs an "amphibian theater" of the absurd. Zhuangzi’s lofty philosophical concepts are reduced here to the senseless cacophony of frogs in a pond. The figure of Zhuangzi, attempting a metaphysical revival, and the nihilistic skull are alike stripped of their humanity, regressing into lurid, blank-staring beasts. In this confrontation between high-minded idealism and the rigid bones of reality, philosophical truths dissolve into mere pond-side noise: loud, chaotic, and fundamentally hollow.

Fu Baoyi (born 2001 in Zhuji, Zhejiang; based in Hangzhou) works across multiple media to deconstruct established modes of perception through humor and irony. His practice examines the alienation and reconstruction of traditional culture and ethical systems within contemporary contexts. Focusing on cultural symbols emerging from China’s social transformation—such as martial arts, folk traditions, and internet memes—as well as reimagined narratives from premodern zhiguai (accounts of the strange) literature in relation to modern history, Fu employs absurd visual narratives to reveal the tensions between collective and individual identity.
Influenced by internet subcultures and youth communities, his recent works adopt sharp, nonsensical metaphors to critique consumerism and the illusory nature of historical narratives. Using everyday imagery as a vehicle, Fu further interrogates the relationship between individual expression and lived reality.