” I have a lyre in my heart. My strong muscles and bones produce bold tones, while my multi-sensitive heart produces soft, gentle tones. I pick up parts left over from large industries and make lyres. The quiet melody is already ringing in my heart. I love these parts. Because these parts, covered in the dust of history, exhale the unique flavour of their time. Through those artefacts I meditate on the aesthetics of that era. The beauty of the industrial age still strikes us. I prefer its beauty to its rise and fall, like an old man recounting a moving scene. The sound of its spinning gears and various metal parts colliding with each other is like a grand symphony of the power of that era. I don’t know which part is my favourite part. It might be a small cog in a large ship, but it is what keeps the ship from being lost at sea. Or it could be part of a porthole where people used to lie on their backs and look out over the blue sea. These discarded parts blow my mind. The unique metal parts, which are a concentration of the greatness and wisdom of the creators of that era, make a cheerful and powerful sound that is a marvel to behold. They are irreversible metal parts that embody the dreams of many engineers. Moulds are made from blueprints of the time, and everything from minute gears to huge propellers are cast into three-dimensional models. They are hard but not inorganic like steel, and their parts, which are inhabited by the thoughts of the designers and the body warmth of the producers, are rigorous but not monotonous, with tens of millions of variations, giving the impression that the design style of industrial parts differs greatly from region to region. Different cultural backgrounds and different processing methods hide different aesthetic sensibilities. When the storm of the Industrial Revolution swept across the world, everything melted into and intertwined with the soil there, like dew in a desert. For me, it is important to keep in mind all the messy components. Because they were all sounds I was trying to play. I was on a mission to rework them into a work of art and sing the melodies of that era once more. I want to sing of the past and preserve its magnificent fragments. And I want to sing of the present and celebrate the return of the heroic spirit of today. In designing and combining them again and again, I discovered a beauty that must not be forgotten. Cold skeletons are transformed into soft curves, the wisdom of Western industry into the flavour of Eastern art. The process of recombination is like dew melting into the earth. This earth is nothing but a lyre in my heart. It is the medium through which I express the emotions of my life, the warmth and coldness of the world. As there is a lyre in everyone’s heart, we probably spend a lifetime searching for it and a lifetime playing it. The former shipyards of heavy industry have become a window to modern culture and hold many memories in people’s hearts. This sculpture is like an old sea lyre song playing in our hearts.”

– Gang Lin