The Singapore Art Museum's director, as well as a number of representatives of the Chinese media and the artist's friends, flew over to attend the event.

A towering billboard and a large array of floral arrangements reflected the significance of the exhibition to this particular community of art patrons.

Meanwhile, only a very small number of "regulars" on the local art scene attended.

While the curator waxed lyrical about the meaning behind the green dogs, the artist said separately on the opening night he had painted them without prior thought;happened".

Zhou said he liked to paint family members, and well, the dog was part of the family.

First he painted him in black, then he chose green, with a surprisingly satisfactory result.

Organized by the CP Foundation, the show presents green dogs ranging from the lovable (mostly in the form of smaller sculptures) to the spitting and snarling - red tongues lolling, out of breath.

But as one child remarked in the gallery,dogsbark". Part wolf - or some ancient creature - the dogs snarl wildly, yet make no sound.

They are not to everybody's taste.

Zhou said his two first exhibitions of dogs (in Singapore in 1997 and San Francisco in 1998) were not well received by the public; he was even ridiculed. But then, a 2.5 m x 2 meter painting sold in San Francisco for about US$7,000, fetching about US$9,000 in the Poly Auction in Beijing.

All of a sudden, Zhou's green dogs were the hot dogs of the art market.

Yet, he said he did not paint for the market, nor for anybody else. In fact, Zhou said, "selling" was not always in the vocabulary of Chinese painters. schools closed during the Cultural Revolution, I was painting all the time, but had no idea one could make money from art. I just gave my paintings away as presents to friends.

"The boom in the last three years has to do with China's opening its doors to the world, and to the growth of the country's economy. It is quite gratifying; it gives artists new chances and new challenges," Zhou said.

He believes "good painters" will survive, even if the market turns its attention away from Chinese contemporary art.

What for him

Zhou said it was essential for artists to look for new challenges.

His green dogs have naturally evolved over the years.

The smoothness of the dogs' skin has been replaced by the texture of greenish-brown hair. With their large heads, sharp teeth andupthe dogs have transformed from pets to wild animals.

While Zhou's green dogs are mostly depicted alone or in the company of other dogs, Green Dog and the Red Body shows a naked figurehalf man, half beastcrouched over a tiny human figure and circled by a pack of dogs.

While the painting focuses intimately on the bodies, Zhou says there is nothing sexual about it; it is more an act of play.

A graduate of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts (1982), Zhou, who was born in 1955 in Chongqing, is not one to blindly follow the trends.

In the 1990s, when many artists from China were engaged in cynical realism and political pop, Zhou drew inspiration from German new expressionism.

Upon his return home in 1989 he delved into traditional Chinese culture, incorporating it in a personal style, as is evident in his floral series.

The green dog series may be high on collectors' lists but a more comprehensive exhibit would have done more justice to this bold artist.

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