"As an artist, my dream is to become a doctor. Making art is all about looking at oneself, examining oneself and somehow seeing the world."

So said Chen Zhen last year. This unusual vision of art and its relation to medicine is critical to the Serpentine Gallery's exhibition of his work, which spans the final six years of Zhen's life, from 1996--2001. Zhen's work revolves around balance and integration, the blurring of East and West, mysticism and science, concrete and insubstantial. The Serpentine's selective show explains all sides to his often-enigmatic work.

Born in 1950s Shanghai, the young Chen Zhen experienced the full power of China's Cultural Revolution, leaving images that would influence his later work. In the early and mid 1980s, Zhen began to use art as a counter-revolution, appealing to the spirituality of old China, which he felt was denied under Communism. The greatest influence on his work, however, was moving to Paris in 1986. By experimenting with art as a method of resolving the cultural conflict between his upbringing and his new home, Zhen created the distinctive style the Serpentine's retrospective demonstrates.

As always with the Serpentine, the gallery space is used to great effect, and the curators have not spared the audience a dramatic first glimpse of Zhen's work. The first piece the visitor is met by is Project Mental -- Zen Garden (2000), placed to act as a physical and spiritual introduction to the exhibition. A fibreglass scale model of Zhen's view of the ideal modern Zen garden is matched on two walls by the macaronic design notes associated with it. The mix of French and Chinese matches the balance of the model, which shows stylised representations of the major organs hovering illuminated over raked sand. Among the organs, like steel insects, deformed forceps, tweezers and skewers ply an alien medicine. Grown to great size and carefully placed, each instrument is also twisted as to appear slightly organic -- the result is not crowded or threatening but serene, like a steel tree holding strange fruit. The implication is clear: Zhen invites the viewer to consider the role of Western medicine within the Chinese view of the body. The theme is present throughout the show, most notably in Black Broom (2000), where a familiar, homely broom is made monstrous and threatening by replacing the brush with black transfusion tubing and hypodermic needles, the blowing the whole up to huge proportions. Zhen's work is often large, exploiting the fact one cannot perceive all of it at once to surprise and invite scrutiny.

Zhen hides his sense of humour beneath these layers, but playful works such as No way to sky, No door to earth (1995), which avoids totality of perception by being a door jammed into a corner, show his awareness of his artfulness, whilst still creating an air of pointless journeying. This door truly leads nowhere. Chen Zhen's work betrays a sly knowledge and confidence, and once one can enter through No door the rest of the works betray their ironic roots. The heart of the "beaded" works such as Crystal Ball (1999), an organic cage of prayer and abacus beads surrounding four litres of saline solution in a spherical flask, lies in the empty space of the piece and the impossibility of focusing on both the cage and the saline, or the inverted "vision" one perceives through it. In physical form Zhen brings together images of East and West, but the viewer cannot comprehend both. I feel the "beaded" works are among hid most effective, blending organic simplicity with great subtlety of meaning.

Ritual is another large element in Zhen's work, symbolised in his use of candles and chant. Altar of light / Autel de la lumière (2000) places a child's chair halfway up a wall and adds a misshapen house of multicoloured candles. As with Zhen's door to nowhere, there is a sense of a failed building or rite of passage, of a life fizzled out, now fit only for ritual or wake. Daily Incantations (1996) mixes the sound of daily life in Shanghai with chants from Mao's Red Book, played out in a theatre of Chinese chamber pots surrounding a ball of Western junk. Despite being somewhat reminded of the Death Star when I saw the ball, the piece moved me very much to reflect upon the rituals of life and the trash it produces. The scale of the piece, enclosing the observer in sound, adds to this affect.

The star of the show, without a doubt for me, is Jue Chang / Dancing Body, Dreaming Mind (new version, 2001). Adapted from 1998's Jue Chang / Fifty Strokes to Each, the huge work is part of a composite piece. It consists of drums made from skins and furniture, and surrounds the observer in sound (or its potential) as well as organic colour and texture. Despite its size, Jue Chang does not overwhelm, and the smell of curing skin is strangely comforting. The huge drums made from beds, chairs and stools hang on loom-like wooden scaffolds, lending the piece a rustic feel. As a blending of East and West it is both intelligent and effective. I just hope that when the entire piece is assembled and played as an instrument (Dancing Body, Dreaming Mind is one fifth of the whole) I can be there to see and hear it.

Overall, Zhen's work is highly rewarding once one unlocks his code of interplay between elements. It is more complex than it initially appears, and well worth a visit.