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Lot Essay
Liu Wei graduated from the Print Department of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. The academy's systematic study and training rendered him a dab hand, adept at "solving problems" and respecting various themes from a platform of structured thinking, while being able to ply all manner of creational methods. China's social transformation and shifts, however, have had an impact on his creation.
In 1999, Liu Wei sought to integrate different kinds of themes into the landscape that bears the texture similar to meat. He says that humans, animals, landscapes are all alike; they all have souls, so he integrates them all together into his paintings. To translate this tenet into practice, Liu Wei accordingly created We Love Nature (Lot 49), a singular Pink Period human figure and landscape work.
Liu Wei comes from a staid military family. Subject to the strict control of tutors as a child, this strait-jacket of virtue, morality and ethics eased in his adolescence, with the artist's budding doubts about the socio-status quo ultimately forced to find outlet in his art. The 1994 exhibition at the S?o Paolo Biennial of the group work Swimming aroused quite a stir and a sensation. Coming from the influence of a 'gender-neutral' communist nation, gender themes in the artist's paintings are straightforward, yet they are also allegorical and pregnant with political implications and, as a release from sexual preoccupations and their fierceness, give voice to an unprecedented expression. The new realist painting method Liu Wei initiated has galvanised painting with its 'cynical realism', thus penning a new chapter in the history of Chinese contemporary art. Just as the suggestive nature of 'water' in Swimming Series, the woodland scenery in We Love Nature recalls the artist's happy-go-lucky childhood moments amid nature in rural Hebei. Since 1993, Liu Wei has frequently participated in major exhibitions abroad, shuttling back and forth between China and Europe. The contrast between the realities of a developing country versus the already developed countries in Europe appeared to the artist's eyes as a manifestation of contrasting freedoms between the two regimes: between mankind close to nature, and nature sacrificed to urbanisation. At the source lies the relationship between people and the environment, which is akin to the relationship between people and nature as the notion of 'sublime' portrayed in works by JMW Turner. (fig. 1) Liu Wei strives to blend the figures into the scenery. Although the colours remain blue, green, pink and other bright shades, the flow of the pigment around the canvas conveys a sense of their imminent spontaneous disappearance.
The memorable text and phrases in the canvas have shed the tentative doubt articulated in the 1996 Do You Like Me? In We Love Nature, No Smoking and the graphically-wrought Skul. Liu Wei persists in his format of shouting slogans in a direct questioning of the realism of corrupt practices. Just as in poster slogans during the Cultural Revolution, of which the artist adopts the more active aspects, authoritative questions are directed at the human heart. (fig. 2)
Liu Wei reveals not only the literal meaning of the wording in the phrase I Love Nature, but he is also depicting the relationship between words and pictures; this tag and his ironic approach also mirror the strife and discord subsisting between man and nature, while also extending to encompass the artist's powerlessness and forfeiture of reality. Such questioning of a civilized society also encapsulates this cynical realist painter's main idea - a corrupt social tableau shorn of idealism, depicted with a visceral characterisation. Such intense beauty and ugliness in form and content is reminiscent of works by Francis Bacon which likewise distort gestures and brush the figures into an abstract plight, caught up in loneliness, taboo, pessimism and pathology - portraying the human social crises of the psychological state.
In the Revolutionary Family Series, (fig. 3) Liu Wei banteringly - even in an absurd way - renders the military father figure "from what he calls a 'new blasphemy' to expose and treat those who are traditionally considered sacred (Johnston Chang)", and as a catharsis for the conflict and the side-lining of particular social ideologies in the referenced period. Entering into his Pink Period, Liu Wei's emphasis formed a pure continuum that departed from his earlier series of cynicism. Especially since the 1998 creation of the Landscape Series, he has eschewed reliance on any one theme and further refined his language. The concept he borrows from traditional Chinese brush painting melds with American art critic Greenberg's emphasis on painting to produce the mainstream 'image' of the times; making Liu Wei's personal painting language to 'stand out from the crowd'.
We Love Nature is not a literary narrative unfolding image of figures and scenery; it is a rich picture composed of a formula that includes sceneryof water , greenwood, figures, skull and sky. The large areas of flesh in the foreground slowly dissolve into the background, but linger as an atmospheric effect. The figures seem to be symbolic elements in the painting, without any interaction with each other. These figures all lack facial features and there is only an outline of the human form; the lower halves of the bodies erode into the landscape at their edges. Contemporary-style clothing and colours, surreal figures with a business-like attitude, all pass into the viewer's memory as a real-time image as beauty helplessly vanishes.
In 1999, Liu Wei sought to integrate different kinds of themes into the landscape that bears the texture similar to meat. He says that humans, animals, landscapes are all alike; they all have souls, so he integrates them all together into his paintings. To translate this tenet into practice, Liu Wei accordingly created We Love Nature (Lot 49), a singular Pink Period human figure and landscape work.
Liu Wei comes from a staid military family. Subject to the strict control of tutors as a child, this strait-jacket of virtue, morality and ethics eased in his adolescence, with the artist's budding doubts about the socio-status quo ultimately forced to find outlet in his art. The 1994 exhibition at the S?o Paolo Biennial of the group work Swimming aroused quite a stir and a sensation. Coming from the influence of a 'gender-neutral' communist nation, gender themes in the artist's paintings are straightforward, yet they are also allegorical and pregnant with political implications and, as a release from sexual preoccupations and their fierceness, give voice to an unprecedented expression. The new realist painting method Liu Wei initiated has galvanised painting with its 'cynical realism', thus penning a new chapter in the history of Chinese contemporary art. Just as the suggestive nature of 'water' in Swimming Series, the woodland scenery in We Love Nature recalls the artist's happy-go-lucky childhood moments amid nature in rural Hebei. Since 1993, Liu Wei has frequently participated in major exhibitions abroad, shuttling back and forth between China and Europe. The contrast between the realities of a developing country versus the already developed countries in Europe appeared to the artist's eyes as a manifestation of contrasting freedoms between the two regimes: between mankind close to nature, and nature sacrificed to urbanisation. At the source lies the relationship between people and the environment, which is akin to the relationship between people and nature as the notion of 'sublime' portrayed in works by JMW Turner. (fig. 1) Liu Wei strives to blend the figures into the scenery. Although the colours remain blue, green, pink and other bright shades, the flow of the pigment around the canvas conveys a sense of their imminent spontaneous disappearance.
The memorable text and phrases in the canvas have shed the tentative doubt articulated in the 1996 Do You Like Me? In We Love Nature, No Smoking and the graphically-wrought Skul. Liu Wei persists in his format of shouting slogans in a direct questioning of the realism of corrupt practices. Just as in poster slogans during the Cultural Revolution, of which the artist adopts the more active aspects, authoritative questions are directed at the human heart. (fig. 2)
Liu Wei reveals not only the literal meaning of the wording in the phrase I Love Nature, but he is also depicting the relationship between words and pictures; this tag and his ironic approach also mirror the strife and discord subsisting between man and nature, while also extending to encompass the artist's powerlessness and forfeiture of reality. Such questioning of a civilized society also encapsulates this cynical realist painter's main idea - a corrupt social tableau shorn of idealism, depicted with a visceral characterisation. Such intense beauty and ugliness in form and content is reminiscent of works by Francis Bacon which likewise distort gestures and brush the figures into an abstract plight, caught up in loneliness, taboo, pessimism and pathology - portraying the human social crises of the psychological state.
In the Revolutionary Family Series, (fig. 3) Liu Wei banteringly - even in an absurd way - renders the military father figure "from what he calls a 'new blasphemy' to expose and treat those who are traditionally considered sacred (Johnston Chang)", and as a catharsis for the conflict and the side-lining of particular social ideologies in the referenced period. Entering into his Pink Period, Liu Wei's emphasis formed a pure continuum that departed from his earlier series of cynicism. Especially since the 1998 creation of the Landscape Series, he has eschewed reliance on any one theme and further refined his language. The concept he borrows from traditional Chinese brush painting melds with American art critic Greenberg's emphasis on painting to produce the mainstream 'image' of the times; making Liu Wei's personal painting language to 'stand out from the crowd'.
We Love Nature is not a literary narrative unfolding image of figures and scenery; it is a rich picture composed of a formula that includes sceneryof water , greenwood, figures, skull and sky. The large areas of flesh in the foreground slowly dissolve into the background, but linger as an atmospheric effect. The figures seem to be symbolic elements in the painting, without any interaction with each other. These figures all lack facial features and there is only an outline of the human form; the lower halves of the bodies erode into the landscape at their edges. Contemporary-style clothing and colours, surreal figures with a business-like attitude, all pass into the viewer's memory as a real-time image as beauty helplessly vanishes.