That it is, the child who was making things from mud under a longyan tree in a country yard has activated industrial design skills that he had learned from school to make sculptures for the world. He wants to make a spirit of all things on earth, the most precious one of all kinds, a living being with blessing for human beings, and a species owns great value for existence individually and symbolized of history and culture. Therefore, there is an animal showing up from the ocean of history and culture with a spiked horn on the head, quite chubby, walking confidently and easy right toward him. While the moment they meet in a intersection, they fall in love and understand each other immediately and here a new visual image of art has accomplished.

From his point of view, the reason that chose rhino for creation is not only for it has been living on earth for thousands of years, for the uncertainty of those myths, legends, and depicting swirling around it, and for is a profoundly universal combination as a symbol, which evoked all his curiosity and the desire for creating a new vision of contemporary style - the vaguer the image, the more innovative the creation is! We immediately aware of his capabilities for transforming on visual image - the series of King Kong Rhino, casting bronze a primitive image of ancient Shang and Zhou with contemporary minimal scientific techniques and conquering the short naturalism of initial representational figure, display in front of us with minimal, hard-edged, industrial image that perfectly interpreted the ancient one into the concept of contemporary. He had named his own museum in Beijing "Found Museum" representing the idea that integrating the classical with modern, and FOUND the classic more classical. This is a place where Shih invites many outstanding artists to visit and display with their works across from where history and tradition correspondent with each other, and beyond outstanding, he made himself explored and transformed a new image for rhino which upright the head and the horn toward strength and future.

These images of prehistoric animals had been consisted into initial objects for art and soon afterwards were they patterned, abstracted, and symbolized into a basic expression of arts and crafts. Franz Boas, a reputable anthropologist, folklorist, and a pioneer of American geography, documented a view concerning about a close relationship between the local artistic patterns and symbols with zoomorphism. According to his research, the development and evolution of the ancient patterns and symbols which has become one of the most significant sources for today's art and craft were widely abstracted from the structure of limbs and the features of bodies of animals.

Moreover, zoomorphism (animal image) is one of the important objects for human beings for expressing visual art and creating spiritual image. In the age of prehistoric times, as we have seen, the zoomorphism was attributed to totem of life and hunting trophies. It is the primary approach to associate animals with human society. While in the slavery and feudalism, the agricultural civilization of natural economy had constantly featured the society, and the zoomorphism, the symbol of wealth obtaining from attacking cities or nations and capture territories and the environmental appendant of social life, primarily appeared in art forms such as painting. While after the bourgeois industrial revolution in Europe, our history jumped into the great geographical discoveries, the age of exploiting raw materials for industrial products, and consuming expansion. As the new species of the New World, zoomorphism became a major depicted object for painting. However, soon along with the development of industrialization and modernization, people had no longer been exulting for new territories and new sources of raw materials. On the contrary, the industrial revolution had brought a different lifestyle that people were more likely enjoying it, and had experienced more negative impact for spiritual life of the new lifestyle. The zoomorphism then vanished from the plastic art in the subsequent epoch and became more and more marginalized and weakened.

From above the brief retrospection we can find out that from ancient prehistory to the twentieth century, and for tens of thousands of years, the zoomorphism,  whether originally inspired awe for vitality, then neighbors of humans' life for leisure-related, and then a symbol presenting the emotion of la dolce vita after being tamed, or being judged by humans from the points of religion, symbol, science, aesthetics, has been viewed from n the shoes of human beings, and been limited under the sense of humans and under the mastery and controlling of mankind.  The zoomorphism is just an image of sense and power under humans' thumb.

For there was a heavy trend swirling in Europe and America among western philosophy for re-examining traditional reasonable subjectivity and a large-scale influence for culture, we then be aware that our sense and consciousness had been dominating and taking control of zoomorphism. Since the return of the body in philosophical meaning, the world of human beings is no longer a hierarchical structure taking over by sense and consciousness, and rewards a wider and better vision and possibilities.

Only then do we are not in an unrelated relationship of duality between me, a human, and it, an animal, for the cognition of human society. Humans are not only the result of thought and consciousness but the result of animality. For the relationship between humans and animals and the zoomorphism in the artworks created by humans are no longer a reflection of sense and intellectual of humans or a manner of thought of duality between each other (behind the scene is humans and the outside world) under the sense of superiority and priority of we human beings.

Apart from human-oriented and the limitations based on rationality, then we have been aware that the rational industrial civilization and the advanced power of control have brought us negative effects more prominent when our human history steps into the latter half of the twentieth century; the entire environment including animals are getting worse for we are too confident relying on the unrestrained rationality and conquering. At this moment we suddenly realized that our rationality will never solve all the problems on earth and our knowledge and abilities are originated for other reasons. As to animals, they do not develop what we expected accordingly - there is a greater change taking place. No matter where the spark flicks, the fish in the moat will eventually suffer. We are under the negative effects of industrial and technological civilization that a fatality huge over us, even our animal neighbors won't have a chance escaping from it.

Therefore, it has become an important trend to create artworks about animals. Animals are no longer a minor role for creation, and their characteristic and the way they behave are varied. Such as rhinos of Shih that he has been creating a series of rhino sculptures with different character and feature for King Kong Rhino, Harley Rhino, The Impregnable Rhino, The reappearing King Kong Rhino, and those early rhino family members, etc.

To value Shih's rhino artworks for contemporary art, we should take into account both from the perspective of speciology and the theory of evolution, and plus the development of the contemporary culture and the knowledge changing. Otherwise, his creativity and achievement, especially the application of materials of stainless steel and casting iron and the interpretation of geometric, hard-edged, welding, and rivets, are considering on the primary attained level of skill and material application, as like his early rhino sculptures that mostly depended on realism, or like those ancient animals that they were disposable as an object and motif for artists' concerns. If so, we can only depict his efforts as "the zoomorphism of artwork" and just see it as a new zoomorphism. If we, however, try to analyze how the rhino image emerge with a larger scale of cultural perspective, strive to eliminate from the mode of duality, and back to the animal's instinct and desire of sensational object, and reveal what really zoomorphism is by understanding the perspective of contemporary art. Then we can say that, the rhinos, created by Shih, are animal art which had conquered the control of main subject. This animal art we are talking about is no longer merely depicting an animal with presumptions, or according to what humans want. It is taking the opportunity of animals to lead human beings back to physical body by metonymic approach and reveal the limitations of human beings by animalistic body. Hence, the zoomorphism in contemporary art is re-emerged for metonymy of animality and perception of human beings. As a divine beast, rhino can be reviewed by the insight of a contemporary artist, inspire so much wonder, emotion, and curiosity, that does not just because of their biological nature of docile or feral; it is because they can mirror defects of human beings from their re-emergence, and from the conversation and contemplation of each other, they encourage us to put ourselves on their shoes and rethink both our relationship with animals and ecological environment and the issue of how to maintain the development of our homeland. It is the true meaning and required object for animal art, and it is the real value for creating the image for rhino today.