Around the deformed arm and above the trailing rebars, is a muzzle, hardened and glossed by indeterminate industrial process. Its hardness disrupts its ma- teriality but reinstates the form as a device for restraint. Its roughness suggests use, yet its sculpted bagginess is embroiled with the fingers’ hopelessness. Not so clear is what the fingers are crossed for; a lottery win? Sex? The sagging muzzle an attempt at fetishistic self restraint, a simulation of the dominant hand of another?
Two polished padlocks hang from the muzzle seemingly responsible for hold- ing it loosely to the form. This doubling conjures a certain anxiety — the muz- zle must be held on, and the thing must not slither away. Contradictorily, the muzzle does not do its implied job, restraining nothing at all, merely perform- ing an illusion of domination or self-capitulation with the freedom to leave.
Via industrial crucifixion, Youn Yunlong Zhang points towards modern turbu- lence of masculinities. The slick materials of the city are ripped away expos- ing the sharpened rebar alluding to a certain structural violence, a sharpened spear-like vein that reinforces a manufactured facade. The muzzle becomes a symbol of disoriented authority, a flaccid attempt at taming violence or self ca- pitulation; fetish becoming reference to identity struggles of queer masculinity. Finally the crossed fingers attend cynical surreality, sordid hope after deforma- tion and decay, struggling between contrary desires for imposed structure and independence.