Liu Wei’s practice is uniquely varied. Working in video, installation, drawing, sculpture and painting, there is no stylistic trend that links his work. Rather, Liu perceives the role of the artist as a responsibility of expression without mitigation or censorship, without ties to ideology or form. Running throughout Liu’s work is an engagement with peripheral identity in the context of a larger culture; His works often depict a feeling of excess, corruption, and aggression that reflects cultural anxiety.
In China you don’t find a painter, a sculptor and a video artist, but an artist who works in painting, sculpture, photography, video and (why not?) performance, all at the same time. Liu Wei in Beijing to select works for my exhibition in Turin, not only beautiful paintings of cityscapes but also architectural models of famous buildings, such as St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Empire State Building, made from the same rubber used to make bones. fake dog In Europe, an artist looking for inspiration both in a pet store and in the early work of Gerhard Richter would likely be dismissed as lacking a coherent point of view.
Liu Wei’s paintings have been seen to characterize the general feeling of malaise of the time. With renowned works such as New Generation (1990), Liu recycles Mao’s iconic image into a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the current state of post-Cultural Revolution China. Liu has been active in exhibitions such as China’s New Art, Post-1989, Hong Kong, Sydney and Vancouver touring exhibitions, the 1998-99 exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art, New York and San Francisco. Liu also participated in the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 and has had solo shows at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, USA in 1999 and at the Urs Meile Gallery, Switzerland in 2004. The word on Chinese art in this moment is “Buy!” but I wasn’t convinced that we Westerners really understand what’s going on there. Ten years ago, some Chinese artists, such as Chen Zen or Huang Yong Ping, appeared on the Western radar screen, satisfying a certain obsolete “orientalist” longing among some collectors.
People like Uli Sigg, a former Swiss ambassador to China, who has some 1,500 pieces of Chinese and Asian art in his collection, and another Swiss national, Lorenz Helbling, who opened his gallery, ShanghART, in China more than a decade ago, they are reaping the benefits of their foresight. But now Western collectors and dealers are descending on China like an aimless swarm of annoying flies. In reality, today’s burgeoning Chinese art world depends very marginally, if at all, on the establishment of galleries in New York and London. Large crowds can pack the Miami Basel and Frieze art fairs, but those numbers pale in comparison to the potential size of the art market within China.