Born in 1972, Liu Wei is a Chinese artist based in Beijing who explores 21st-century socio-political concepts such as the contradictions of society and the alternation of developing cities and the urban landscape.
After graduating from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in 1996, Liu launched his career as part of the Post-sense Sensibility movement. In this movement, the group of artists designed to produce extreme experiences for those viewing their work and tackled absurdity, intuition, and improvisation.
Art trends that had been popular in the early 1990s, such as Cynical Realism and Political Pop, seemed outdated to many younger generation artists like Liu. New art forms, such as performance art, video art, and installation, were extensively embraced and used to demonstrate conceptual art. These forms eventually came to dominate contemporary Chinese art.
Specifically, Liu uses materials that are re-contextualized in many of his sculptural and installation works, which help produce meanings from the stuff they were made from. To mention his urban surroundings, Liu frequently uses architectural and geometric forms in his work. Conceptualism, satire, and humour are characteristic of his art.
One of Liu’s artistic influences is the city itself. Notably, Liu has used city landscapes and urban architecture in many of his works, including Outcast (2007). His works represent the ideas of alienation and vice in urban infrastructure. About the influence of the city on his art, Liu stated, “Cities are reality; all of China is a city under construction, and of course this influences me.”
Liu’s city is ahistorical. It depicts brainless material alteration, decay, construction, and destruction. Hence, society is subjected to a continually changing environment and an overwhelming, everlasting present. One can only live in the chaotic present, rather than organize their experiences based on a historical anecdote.
Furthermore, Liu Wei has produced artworks consisting of every day “readymade” materials. For example, As Long as I See It (2006) and Anti-Matter (2006) are composed of household objects such as exhaust fans, washing machines, and televisions — many which have been cut out, altered, or “blown apart” by some unspeakable force.
These are meant to show the consumerism and mass production of modern society, using objects representing the luxury of our contemporary capitalist society. He also uses these materials to suggest a reinvestment in materials. Even though new machines and technologies produce newfound types of knowledge, humans still notice the forms of everyday things.
His artworks and installations are produced via tinkering, where workers manipulate the forms in a theatrical experience. Later on, Liu revisits his installations and sculptures, making significant modifications to them. Thus, his artworks are continually changing, like the city landscape and any other form of matter.
Rather than starting with a technique or material, Liu uses his artistic endeavours with ideas and then thinks about how he can best express them. When he becomes “fluent” and comfortable with a particular type of work and can longer find any obstacles that material type, he then changes his styles and materials.
Today, Liu’s works are held in the collections of the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslon, Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul. Liu has also gone on to be the subject of several exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and Asia.
