Liu Wei

Liu Wei’s photographs will serve as an example in which he presents a new view on a prime motif of Chinese landscape image and philosophy: the cloudy mountain…

A major artist in the Cynical Realism (Wanshi xianshizhuyi) movement that emerged post 1989, Liu Wei paintings has been seen to characterize the era’s pervasive feeling of malaise. With renowned works such as New Generation (1990), Liu recycles the iconic image of Mao in an ironic interpretation of China’s current post Cultural Revolution state…

Saatchi gallery
Liu Wei’s practice is uniquely varied. Working in video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and painting, there is no stylistic tendency which ties his work together. Rather Liu perceives the artist’s function as a responsibility of unmitigated, uncensored expression, tied to neither ideology nor form. Throughout Liu’s work lies an engagement with peripheral identity in the context of wider culture; his works often describe a sentiment of excess, corruption, and aggression reflective of cultural anxiety.

Liu views the human body as a metaphor for contemporary anthropological study through which he can engage with ideas of capitalism, globalism, and the urban condition. Though his work is rarely figurative, his pieces suggest self-sustaining organic systems that mirror societal structures, often incorporating materials and images which relate to a base state of being in a humorous way.

Memory, a certain passage of the scene of past events which seem not to be recollected and a kind of facts which can not be recovered…

Paintings