Liu Wei (72) 刘炜

From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki

Liu Wei is a multifaceted artist who works in video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and painting. Whatever the medium, biting social satire and arresting visual imagery characterize his work. Born in Beijing in 1972, Liu continues to live and work there today.

Contents 1 Date & Place of Birth 2 Education & Development 3 Art 3.1 Photography 3.2 Painting 3.3 Installations 4 Emergence & Reception 5 Awards & Honors 6 Exhibitions 7 Gallery Affiliations 8 References

Date & Place of Birth

Liu Wei was born in Beijing in 1972.

Education & Development

In 1996, Liu earned a BFA in painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Art

Liu Wei employs many forms of media with ease, creating a carnivalesque art vocabulary. Sculptures such as "Indigestion II" express the excessiveness and consumerism of Chinese society; and installations like "Super Structure" animate the room with a kind of antisocial energy. Liu Wei’s artworks express movement, restlessness, transition and transformation. Some earnest Chinese observers regard his outlook as embodying only bile and bad-temper, haughtily removed from everyday life and the ordinary trials and tribulations of Chiense citizenry. Closer examination of his satire suggests that his ironic detchment expresses an irreverent take-no-prisoners style of humor unusual in visual art.

Photography

Liu creates surreal compositions, often made mysteriously or humorously ambiguous or incongruous through digital means. In the gigantic "Landscape (2003)", part of the larger series of the same name, abstracted, naked human body parts mimic the landscape forms of classical ink-and-wash painting.

Painting

Liu Wei paints monumental oil canvases with photographic precision and clarity. Perhaps his most famous series in oil painting is “Purple Air,” which comprises a series of stylized skyscraper cityscapes. According to a  Saatchi Gallery publication, “Liu's paintings approach ideas of urban development from a future-fiction standpoint; his Purple Air series are unnerving predictions depicting the globe as one planetary megalopolis. Verging on abstraction, Liu's imagined skyscrapers tower with a density exceeding space, their linear forms lit up like circuit boards, transmitting a bar-code existence. Devoid of any hint of nature, even the sky is stylised as screensaver inanity, toxic backdrops of smoggy grey or purple hanging over all. The title is taken from the Toaist scripture, where the term "purple air" denotes the original life force in the creation of the universe.”

Installations

In one large-scale installation work from 2005 entitled, Indigestion, Liu used asphalt, miniature city buildings, and all kinds of consumer products to create a three meter wide, representation of excrement. Indigestion appears to be the result of excessive intake of undigestable materials rejected by the body. The artist suggests that the people of China may have trouble digesting their rapidly globalizing and increasingly consumerist society.
In the series of installations entitled Super Structure, Liu constructed model cityscapes from dog chews. On March 22, 2007, Super Structure was displayed at Ai Weiwei’s art warehouse, before its appearance in the Saatchi Gallery's The Revolution Continues (2008) show. As usual, Liu Wei used materials that shocked – cow skin, used to make rubber--which was fashioned into models of the Tate Modern, the Pentagon, St. Petersburg Cathedral, the Empire State Building and other landmarks. Liu's attitude toward these architectural monuments is deeply ironic, his love-hate relationship with these cultural symbols, expressed in the title: Love It, Bite It.

Emergence & Reception

Shortly after his graduation from CAA, Liu garnered international attention at the 1999 Beijing in London exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London.

Awards & Honors

Liu Wei was recognized by the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards as the artist of the year in 2007. He was one of the five Chinese artists representing the PRC at the Venice Biennale in 2005, the first year China participated in its own pavilion.

Exhibitions

In 2007 Liu exhibited at Chinese Art Archives and Warehouse, in Beijing; in 2006 Love It, Bite It appeared at Biz Art in Shanghai, and in 2004, his show, Flowers was held at Urs Meile Gallery in Lucerne. In 2007 alone, he particpated in group exhibitions including the 9th Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon, Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, and Passion for Art at the Essel Museum, Klosterneuburg.

For Liu Wei's CV, click here.

Gallery Affiliations

Liu is represented by the Courtyard Gallery in Beijing, the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and Asian Art Options in Singapore.

References

http://www.universalstudios.org.cn/Artists/liuwei/en/liuwei.html
http://www.goedhuiscontemporary.com/artists/liu-wei/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Wei_(artist)
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/liu_wei.htm

http://www.artspy.cn/html/exhibit/0/67/opus_13757.shtml
http://www.artron.net/show_news.php?newid=62454